The regulatory framework for publicly traded football clubs in Brazil today is inspired by Portuguese law. Brazilian football has also become accustomed to importing Portuguese coaches. Now, all that's missing is what can truly change the game: a financing and governance model that treats the club as a market-driven company.
History shows that this path is not new. In the 17th century, Portugal dominated maritime trade until it was overtaken by the Netherlands, which created the Dutch East India Company, the first company to issue public shares. By allowing thousands of citizens to become shareholders, the Dutch democratized investment, expanded the scale of capital, and laid the foundations for the modern financial market.
Brazilian football is experiencing a similar situation: it has scale, audience, and potential for return, but it still lacks the institutional framework that unlocks value.
Among the major football markets, Brazil is the only one that still lacks a fully structured professional league. International experience suggests that well-organized leagues tend to reorganize revenue streams, increase predictability, reduce risk, and enhance asset value. This was the case in England with the Premier League, in Spain with La Liga, and in other centers where the governance of the league product became the economic engine of the ecosystem.
There is also a unique competitive advantage: Brazil has historically been a powerhouse in the development and export of talent. The raw material for much of global football is Brazilian, and virtually every major club in the world has idols who were trained here.
With more capital and better governance, Brazilian clubs can invest even more in youth development, better capture the value of this chain, and expand their global presence, both as sporting protagonists and as platforms for athlete development.
The recent paradox illustrates this well: European clubs winning tournaments with Brazilian players in the spotlight, and sometimes even beating Brazilian clubs with players developed here. A striking example was the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, when Chelsea beat Fluminense with goals from João Pedro, a Brazilian player who came through Fluminense's youth system.
In this context, there is also a complementary strategic path: internationalization through participation in European clubs as a development platform and showcase.
The idea is not theoretical: between 2015 and 2019, Fluminense operated the project with STK Samorin in Slovakia, taking dozens of athletes from Xerém to gain experience and exposure, in an initiative that was even portrayed by Bloomberg as a European showcase for Brazilian talent.
The signing of the Mercosur-European Union agreement in January 2026 does not, for now, create free and widespread movement of workers nor eliminate the migratory and regulatory requirements applicable to foreigners, but it reinforces a vector of integration and predictability for business, investment, and services between the blocs.
In an environment more favorable to capital and partnerships, structures of this type tend to become more viable and sophisticated, and can help correct the central paradox of Brazilian football: creating value here and monetizing it, largely, abroad.
"Fan-investors"
It is precisely in this environment that Portugal deserves close attention. There, clubs have transformed passion into capital and taken their football companies to the market, creating governance discipline and a real investor base.
Brazil already has more than 120 formally constituted SAFs (Sociedades Anônimas de Futebol - Football Corporations), according to a mapping by the Brazilian Institute for Studies and Development of Football Corporations, IBESAF. The growth is rapid, with the number doubling in just over two years, but from a corporate perspective, the model is still being applied in an excessively closed manner.
In practice, most SAFs (Sociedades Anônimas de Futebol, or Public Limited Companies) are created under the concentrated control of a private investor or the club itself, keeping the fan distant from the capital structure and limiting the potential for democratization of financing and governance discipline that the market could impose.
In Portugal, for comparison purposes, the path was quite different. Benfica, Porto, Sporting, and Braga opened their equivalent companies (SADs) to the capital market since the 1990s. In Benfica's case, in particular, its shares have been traded on Euronext Lisbon since 2007, with significant participation from private investors and a substantial free float , which created a secondary market of "fan-investors" and broadened the club's corporate governance discipline.
In September 2025, Benfica SAD reached its highest historical valuation, hitting €6.78 per share, driven by positive financial results and signals of a share buyback by the company itself, a typical move for mature publicly traded companies and still nonexistent in Brazilian football.
More than just maintaining shares traded on the stock exchange, Benfica demonstrates that "going to the market" means transforming football into a true issuer of financial instruments. Benfica SAD finances itself recurrently through public offerings of structured debt, replacing expensive bank capital with diversified market funding, with governance, transparency, and liquidity.
In 2025, for example, it carried out a public offering of bonds listed on Euronext Lisbon, raising €55 million at a rate of 4.5% per year, with demand that almost doubled the available supply, a level of confidence that only publicly traded companies with solid fundamentals can achieve.
The key difference lies in the maturity of governance and compliance: while Benfica operates under the rigorous scrutiny of regulators and thousands of shareholders, demanding global-level transparency, Brazil is still in a stage of 'control governance,' where decisions are often restricted to the circle of the majority investor. To move towards going public, it is imperative that Brazilian SAFs (Sociedades Anônimas Federais - Federal Savings Banks) transcend basic professional management and adopt the transparency standards of publicly traded companies (CVM - Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission), establishing independent boards and rigorous audits.
This path requires creating an Investor Relations (IR) culture that assures fans that their investment is treated as an asset, and not just an emotional donation.
These issuances allow for the financing of infrastructure, working capital, and squad reinforcement without excessive dilution of control, preserving the club's identity and disciplining its management through constant market scrutiny. In Brazil, although the SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol - Football Limited Company) has created the "legal envelope," this financial ecosystem has not yet been built: they remain closed, dependent on concentrated investors, and detached from the structured debt market, which is precisely the instrument that enabled the long-term sustainability of the major Portuguese clubs.
And to attract long-term investors, the implementation of robust financial fair play is an indispensable compliance pillar, guaranteeing the financial health and predictability of clubs. This data is not merely symbolic: it demonstrates that football can operate as a market enterprise, with transparency, governance, and accountability , and that fans can participate as legitimate investors, not just consumers.
Brazilian provision
In Brazil, the potential is incomparably greater. Research by CBF Academy with AtlasIntel indicates that 23.5% of Brazilian football fans, approximately 50 million people, would be willing to invest in club shares if they were offered on the stock market. This represents almost ten times the current number of individual investors on the B3 stock exchange.
No other country simultaneously combines economic scale, a large fan base, the cultural centrality of football, and room for growth. Among the major football markets worldwide, Brazil still lacks a fully structured professional league, which increases uncertainty and reduces revenue predictability.
Everywhere the league has been organized with governance, rules, and commercial discipline, there has been economic expansion of the sector and appreciation of assets. The potential return on investment for Brazilian football is significant and is still undervalued, like a top-tier asset sold at a discount, in a Black Friday atmosphere.
The Brazilian SAF Law already provides the necessary legal instruments. It allows for IPOs, debentures, structured funds, and other sophisticated forms of financing. What is lacking is strategic decision-making and, above all, a willingness to subject football to the transparency and accountability standards of a publicly traded company. Without this, SAFs will remain dependent on concentrated controlling shareholders and expensive capital, vulnerable to short cycles and risks of discontinuity.
The signs of demand are there. The tokenization of rights linked to solidarity mechanisms and the sale of athletes has already shown that there is a public appetite for financial exposure to football, including cases associated with clubs like Vasco and Santos on the Mercado Bitcoin platform. And the popular mobilization in campaigns like the crowdfunding for the Corinthians Arena, which surpassed R$ 40 million, confirms that fans want to participate. The difference between donation and investment, however, is governance: investment requires information, protection, rules, and liquidity.
If the SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol - Football Corporation) was the first step, the decisive one now is to go public with the governance of a publicly traded company. The league is a collective decision and requires coordination between clubs and the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation). Access to the capital market depends on each club, with publicly traded company standards under the supervision of the CVM (Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission), independent boards, rigorous audits, and a genuine Investor Relations culture.
And there is a virtuous effect: capital and governance facilitate consensus for the league, unlocking the growth potential of Brazilian football as a whole. Only in this way will Brazil stop exporting only talent and begin to capture, in the clubs' balance sheets, the value it already produces every day, with more investment, jobs and income in the country.
Ultimately, turning passion into wealth is not a figure of speech. It's a strategy.
José Roberto Afonso is an economist, professor at IDP, and director of the Brazil-Europe Integration Forum – FIBE.
Pedro Trengrouse is a lawyer and president of the Sports Law Commission of the OAB-RJ (Brazilian Bar Association, Rio de Janeiro chapter).
Sebastian Pereira is an Olympic athlete and executive manager of Education and Development at the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB).
