How to Bet on Botafogo

Regatas Botafogo, a rowing club, came first, on 1 July 1894, and on 12 August 1904 a football side was founded in the same Rio neighbourhood, first called the Electro Club. The Campeonato Carioca came to the club in 1907, 1910 and 1912, and in 1909 it thrashed Mangueira 24–0, still the biggest score in Brazilian football. Botafogo took Serie A in 1968, the first carioca side to lift the national league title, and in 1995 they won it again after a 1–1 draw with Santos in the second leg of the final. Relegation followed after finishing last in 2002, and again after finishing last in the 2020 Série A. In 2021 the club's debt reached one billion real. A new era began in February 2022, when the American investor John Textor's holding company Eagle Holdings bought 90% of the football division. Artur Jorge took over for 2024, and after the collapse of the previous season Botafogo won both major competitions they entered. The Série A title was their third Brazilian championship and the first since 1995.

Botafogo play at the Estádio Nilton Santos in Rio de Janeiro, a ground that holds 46,831 people and opened in 2007. It went up to stage the Pan American Games of 2007 and later hosted matches at the 2016 Summer Olympics. That pedigree shows in the facilities, which are modern and built for big nights, and the stadium is a proper platform for the team's biggest occasions. With a crowd of that size behind them, Botafogo have an edge on home soil.

Botafogo's biggest rivalries lie with Flamengo, Fluminense and Vasco da Gama, the other three clubs of the Big Four of Rio de Janeiro. The clash with Flamengo is known as the Clássico da Rivalidade, the Rivalry Derby, because the two were facing each other in rowing before they ever met at football. The duel with Fluminense is Brazil's senior classic among major clubs, and only two fixtures in the Americas are older, which gives it a seniority no other Botafogo fixture can claim. From outside the city, Santos have been a historic opponent since the 1960s, a rivalry that put Pelé and Garrincha, a pair among the finest players of their era, on the same pitch. Four Rio giants and one famous visitor: that is the map of Botafogo's biggest games.