The Depressing End of the Meteoric X1 Brazil

I'm aware that I'm months late to drop this news, almost half a year, however considering my portuguese is non-existent I'm hoping you'll forgive me for my lateness.

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Speed Summary of X1 Brazil

For the uninformed, X1 Brasil was a 1v1 circuit where athletes faced off 1v1 against each other in a boxing card style system. Athletes competed on a pitch slightly bigger than an international Futsal Court size, with an attacker and a keeper on each team. This made for an extremely entertaining spectacle. The champions would hold the champions belt, very much like WWE and MMA style, matches would sell out 10,000 seater stadiums, with the matches being steeamed live in partnership with CazeTV. X1 couldn't have been any more successful than it was until it's doors were forced shut.

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Opened the Door for a Shutdown

You have to understand that every country, every state, every city, and even every town has a slightly different way that they run things, so please understand that the way X1 was run may be considered predatory or unfathomable in the US or Europe, but in Brazil this is what worked, so hold your judgement. The name to remember here is "Esportes da Sorte". Esportes da Sorte is a Brazilian based gambling company who was a major contributor to X1, so much so that X1 was named X1 Esportes da Sorte. This gambling company helped run the league, while using it to promote their gambling services where you could bet on the athletes and matches. This is a complete conflict of interest, but this gambling money is how Esportes da Sorte was able to afford to build the league and have it running. It does go a little deeper with each athlete in the league being a part of a club, where each club was also a gambling company, so the door was open to potential legal intervention from the start.

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The Final Nail

Leave a door open as wide as X1 did regardless of the success, and eventually you'll be caught out, because as much as I love 1v1, you can't hide the way Esportes da Sorte was able to exploit its audience. Brazilian Governement passed a new law that prohibited Gambling companies from being involved in the sports which their users are gambling on which comes into place in 2025. This meant that Esportes da Sorte couldn't be involved in the functioning of X1, hence X1 lost its funding. Esportes da Sorte and all other gambling companies could still allow their users to gamble on the matches, but they couldn't "re-invest" into the sport, meaning the gambling site owned clubs closed their doors, resulting in athletes unable to compete, as well as the overall backing of the league gone, and it was all over.

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Thoughts

We lost a great sport, however I can't support a league were gambling is built to its absiolute core with I'm more than sure a complete flywheel set up as to how to extract the maximum extractable value from all the fans that walked through the door, getting a large chunk of their demographic hooked on gambling I'm expecting was the overall goal. I do believe this can be done right though, X1 clearly had everything else right. The events were spectacular, the boxing card system was genius, the branding was elite, the social media and marketing drew in millions when put together with it's predecessor Ddesafio 1Pra1. X1 can work, it just needs a new investor and I'm sure the fans will return. I'm here hoping for its re-emergence.