🤔 Football and escorts: unexpected bedfellows

Hello! Welcome back to the Brazil Sports newsletter, brought to you by The Brazilian Report. This week, we cast a glance over the surprising connection between Brazilian football clubs and the country’s biggest escort service, Fatal Model.

If you have any questions about this newsletter, or topics you’d like to see covered in future issues, send me an email at [email protected]! 

The Brazilian escort service investing big in … football?

After serving more than a year of a doping ban, mercurial French midfielder Paul Pogba will be allowed to play professional football again as of March. Contract offers are expected to fly in for the former Juventus and Manchester United man, but he will receive few propositions as peculiar as one that would see him sign for Brazilian giants Corinthians — and have his salary paid for by the country’s most prominent escort advertising platform.

The service in question, a company called Fatal Model, offered the São Paulo giants “between BRL 3 million and BRL 4 million a month” (around USD 600,000) to pay Pogba’s salary and bring him to Corinthians, one of Brazil’s most popular clubs.

Now, while it may strike readers as odd to see a company in the sex industry linked to a financial partnership with such a well-known top-flight football club, the reality is that Fatal Model and Brazilian football have become inextricably linked of late.

An unlikely match

The company is currently the biggest sponsor of clubs in Brazil’s Série B, with six second-division sides wearing Fatal Model’s logo on their shirts. It also sponsors Série A club Vitória and tells The Brazilian Report that it plans to add another unnamed top-division team to its portfolio in the near future. 

Fatal Model also sponsored the men’s state championships in Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro this year, as well as buying up advertising hoarding space for roughly 600 matches in Brazil’s top two divisions and friendlies involving the Brazilian national team.

Fatal Model, in the words of its communications director Nina Sag, is based on an idea “that existed for decades in newspapers.” In the same way that print newspapers in Brazil would offer classified advertising space for escorts, Fatal Model was launched in 2016 to offer an online platform for male, female and transgender escorts to advertise and sell their services to prospective clients.

Sag told The Brazilian Report that Fatal Model’s main differential is its “tools to ensure more security for those who advertise and those who buy services.”

The company reported revenue of more than BRL 100 million in 2024 and figures among the 40 most visited websites in Brazil. This month, it announced it had begun operating in 14 European countries. 

Why football?

The foray into sponsoring football goes back a couple of years, gaining nationwide attention when the company offered BRL 200 million to traditional club Vitória, in Brazil’s Northeast, to change its name to “Fatal Model Vitória” — a proposal that was seriously considered but voted down by the club’s members.

The company then became one of Vitória’s main shirt sponsors, making the club Fatal Model’s only sponsorship presence among teams in Brazilian football’s top division.

Nina Sag explains that football allows Fatal Model to “raise important discussions related to a market that has been marginalized for centuries” and that the connection the company establishes with its sponsored clubs allows it to “start demystifying our business.”

Fatal Model’s presence on football shirts and advertising boards has not been without controversy, however. In September, the Justice Ministry’s Consumer Protection Secretariat (Senacon) notified the country’s football governing body about Fatal Model’s ads during league matches, saying that they constituted “inadequate advertising,” as matches were shown on free-to-air television and without age restrictions.

Earlier this year, Brazil’s public prosecution office received a complaint from lawyer Antonio Rodrigo Machado, who argued that Fatal Model’s advertising at Brazilian football matches infringes the country’s Child and Adolescent Statute, which ensures the “inviolability of the physical, psychological and moral integrity of children and adolescents.”

“When accessing [Fatal Model’s] site, in two clicks, a child can see scenes of naked men and women in extremely explicit poses,” Machado told BBC Brasil. “There are restrictions on advertising cigarettes and alcohol, but there are no restrictions on advertising a site for sex workers?”

In response, Sag argued that the company’s football advertising strategy is based purely on brand awareness and not on converting clients. “That’s why sponsorships on advertising boards or club shirts are focused on the Fatal Model logo, without any links or QR codes.”

Sag also stressed that all Fatal Model advertisements comply with the rules of Brazil’s advertising self-regulation board, Conar.

Speaking to The Brazilian Report, Ricardo Fort, sports marketing expert and founder of Sport by Fort Consulting, said he was unaware of any other players in the sex industry having done something similar to Fatal Model’s investment in football. “There are things that only exist in Brazil,” he joked.

As far as the Paul Pogba to Corinthians discussions go, the São Paulo club has issued Fatal Model with a firm thanks but no thanks. Shortly after news of the offer broke, Corinthians stated that it had received the proposal but that no negotiations were underway with the escort service.

Not to be dissuaded, however, Fatal Model subsequently made a BRL 200,000 donation to a crowdfunding initiative started by Corinthians ultras group Gaviões da Fiel to pay off the club’s stadium, built in 2014. But that’s a topic for another edition of the Brazil Sports newsletter.

Other stories we’re following

🏆 Brazil and Real Madrid’s Vini Jr. won Best Men’s Player at the 2024 FIFA Awards this week. The 24-year-old felt he had been snubbed for the Ballon d’Or award in October, which went to Manchester City midfielder Rodri. 

🎉 At the same awards ceremony, FIFA gave out the inaugural Marta Award for best goal in women’s football. The winner? Who else but Marta herself, for her effort from distance during a friendly against Jamaica. Internacional’s Thiago Maia won FIFA’s Fair Play Award for his work on the front lines during the disastrous floods in Rio Grande do Sul earlier this year.

🛹 In a final that went down to the very last trick, Brazil’s Rayssa Leal won the Super Crown title for the third time in her career last weekend during the skateboarding season’s final event in São Paulo.

🎩 Ties for the first and second phases of the 2025 Copa Libertadores were drawn on Thursday. Corinthians will face Venezuelan side UCV, while Bahia were paired with traditional Bolivian club The Strongest. Ties will be played between February 18 and 27.

🏐 Brazilian club Sada Cruzeiro defeated Italians Trentino Itas in the final of the men’s volleyball Club World Championship on Sunday. Cruzeiro has now won the title five times, equaling Trentino’s record.