In recent months, Brazil has finally discovered the root of virtually all its economic problems. It's not the interest rate. It's not chronic household debt. It's not revolving credit card debt. It's not the cost of food, housing, energy, or medicine. It's not a lack of financial literacy. It's not even that old Brazilian tradition of spending today the money that might appear tomorrow.
It's the Bets. There you have it. Mystery solved.
Presidential candidates, politicians who until yesterday probably wouldn't have known the difference between RTP, GGR, and gambling bans, self-exclusion, celebrities suddenly turned experts in family economics, and a segment of society have found a perfect villain: sports betting and online gambling, "Bet." The word, preferably in English, helps a lot. It sounds more dangerous.
And so an irresistibly simple narrative emerged: Brazilians gamble, lose money, stop shopping, destroy their family budgets, and seemingly single-handedly threaten the national economy. If we ban betting, therefore, perhaps Brazilians will immediately start saving, investing, and reading Central Bank reports before breakfast.
That would be wonderful. There's just one small drawback to this theory, or rather, a few billion drawbacks.
When the ticket becomes public, the tone of the discussion changes.
Brazil has coexisted for decades, in a completely normal and institutionalized way, with the CAIXA Lottery games : Mega-Sena, Lotofácil, Quina, Dupla Sena, Lotomania, Timemania, Dia de Sorte, Super Sete and Loteria Federal. And there is nothing wrong with recognizing this. The CAIXA Lotteries are legal, traditional, regulated and play an important role in financing public programs.
That's not the problem. The problem is something else: how can the act of gambling be presented as a threat to the Brazilian family in one context and as a perfectly legitimate activity in another?
In 2025, according to CAIXA itself, federal lotteries raised R$ 26,61 billion. Of this total, R$ 12,2 billion was allocated to social programs, including social security, education, sports, culture, health, and public safety. Great. That's exactly how it should be. A legal activity generates revenue, pays prizes, finances public policies, and operates within established rules.
But that's precisely where the irony lies. For decades, millions of Brazilians chose numbers, formed group bets, marked tickets, and dreamed of the accumulated Mega-Sena prize. There was never a national crisis because grandma bought a Lotofácil ticket on Tuesday. We never heard that the person who marked six numbers was promoting the destruction of Brazilian retail. No one appeared on television demanding to know how many kilos of rice were not bought because someone placed a bet at the lottery shop.
But put the word BET on your cell phone screen and we apparently enter another moral dimension. If a citizen bets on the Mega-Sena lottery, he is dreaming; if he bets on a football match, he is threatening the economic structure of the Brazilian family. If he chooses six numbers, we have entertainment; if he chooses the score of a game, we have a hearing in Congress.
It's a striking transformation. Money, it seems, acquires moral characteristics depending on the receipt.
Before condemning, perhaps it would be helpful to understand the equation.
Part of the debate about betting has become especially creative when the subject is mathematics. Gigantic numbers frequently appear regarding "how much Brazilians have bet." Billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions. The bigger, the better the headline—there's just one slightly inconvenient detail: the amount wagered is not the same thing as the money lost by the player.
Imagine someone depositing R$100. They bet, receive R$80 back, bet the same R$80 again, then R$60, then R$40. Depending on how the bets are counted, that same R$100 can appear several times in the so-called total volume wagered. Suddenly, a R$100 bill acquires the productivity of a small industry.
Therefore, in the regulated sector, a fundamental measure is GGR — Gross Gaming Revenue, which, in simplified terms, represents bets minus prizes paid out. In 2025, the Brazilian regulated market registered R$ 36,9 billion in GGR. According to official data from the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets of the Ministry of Finance, 25,2 million Brazilians placed bets during that period, with an average ticket of R$ 122,00 per month per bettor.
This doesn't mean that R$122,00 is a small amount of money. For some families, it's a lot; for a compulsive gambler, the problem can be much bigger, and gambling addiction should be treated with absolute seriousness. But it also doesn't mean that it's intellectually correct to take the largest available amount, call it "money lost by families," and build a public policy around it.
The rules of mathematics cannot change depending on who is receiving the bet. Furthermore, no one should say that the R$ 26,61 billion collected by CAIXA Lotteries in 2025 simply "disappeared from the economy." That would be absurd. Part of it financed public purposes, and part corresponds to the operation of the activity.
Perfect, so let's use the same logic when we talk about bets. It seems like a revolutionary requirement, but it goes by the name of consistency.
The money that left the market.
Another commonly used argument claims that betting is taking billions away from retail. The National Confederation of Commerce even estimated losses exceeding R$ 142 billion in potential retail revenue in 2024 associated with betting. It's a study worth considering, but it also raises an uncomfortably simple question: isn't all the money spent on leisure also being spent on something else?
The money spent on the Mega-Sena lottery could buy a shirt; a football ticket could pay for dinner; a subscription to five streaming platforms could buy two pairs of shoes; a weekend beer could become an installment payment on a blender. Restaurants compete with supermarkets, movies compete with delivery, concerts compete with travel, travel competes with a new car—and all of them compete with savings.
Welcome to the consumer economy. The fact that someone spends R$100 on one activity inevitably means that those same R$100 will not be spent on another. This is called opportunity cost. It wasn't invented by betting companies. And the Brazilian real continues to demonstrate an extraordinary inability to distinguish whether it left the wallet to buy a pizza, a ticket, or a bet. It simply left.
Interestingly, the Treasure also participates in the game.
There's another part to this discussion that usually appears in slightly smaller print. Authorized betting companies in Brazil are regulated, licensed, taxed, and audited. In 2025, sports betting and online gaming companies returned R$ 14,45 billion to the government and society (R$ 4,5 billion to the legal beneficiaries of the law) and R$ 9,95 billion was collected by the Federal Revenue Service in federal taxes such as IRPJ, CSLL, PIS/Cofins, and Social Security Contributions. Furthermore, the company authorization process generated billions in regulatory fees.
In other words, we have a peculiar situation: the State establishes the rules, the State grants the licenses, the State charges the fees, the State collects the taxes, the State determines the social allocations — and, simultaneously, sectors of politics discover that perhaps the activity that the State itself has just organized should simply be prohibited.
It's a complicated kind of relationship. It would be equivalent to opening a restaurant, charging for an operating license, health inspections, taxes and fees, and then, a few months later, organizing a national movement against dining out.
The problem exists. The exaggeration also exists.
None of this means denying the problems associated with gambling. Gambling addiction exists. Debt exists. Excessive advertising exists. Vulnerable gamblers need protection. Minors cannot have access. Beneficiaries of certain social programs require specific rules. Illegal operators need to be combated. Limits, self-exclusion, behavioral monitoring, responsible advertising, and conscious gambling mechanisms are absolutely necessary tools. This is a serious discussion.
What is not serious is concluding that, because a portion of consumers develop destructive behavior, the only rational solution is to eliminate the entire product. If we consistently followed this logic, we would have a very busy legislative agenda: credit cards cause debt, do we ban them? Alcohol causes alcoholism, do we ban all alcoholic beverages? Sugar contributes to obesity and diabetes, do we close down bakeries?
The problem isn't recognizing the harm. It's believing that prohibition and solution are synonymous. They never were.
The Brazilian theory of vodka
Imagine Brazil discovers tomorrow that alcoholism has become a national emergency. Politicians make emotional speeches, experts appear on television programs, celebrities post indignant videos. After months of debate, the grand solution finally emerges: let's ban vodka.
Beer continues. Wine continues. Cachaça continues. Whiskey continues. Champagne continues. But vodka is gone. Problem solved.
Naturally, no alcoholic would switch to another drink. He would probably say, “Unfortunately, they’ve banned my vodka. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be doing Pilates.”
It's obvious how absurd it is. Because the problem isn't vodka. It's problematic alcohol consumption.
With betting, the logic should be the same. If there is problematic gambling, we address problematic gambling. If there is abusive advertising, we regulate advertising. If credit is being misused, we block credit. If there are illegal operators, we combat illegal operators. If there are vulnerable people, we create barriers and protection mechanisms.
But banning online gambling and sports betting while other forms of betting remain perfectly legitimate would be the Brazilian version of: “Vodka is forbidden. Beer is allowed.” And, to be clear, this is not an argument against beer, much less against the Federal Lottery. It's an argument against logic.
Perhaps the betting itself isn't the problem. Perhaps it's the selectivity.
CAIXA Lotteries demonstrate, in reality, something important: it is possible for a society to coexist with gambling, regulate it, oversee it, direct part of the revenue to public purposes, and simultaneously recognize that the vast majority of people participate recreationally and that a minority needs special protection.
Therefore, public lotteries should not be used as a target. They should be used as proof of concept.
Brazil has accepted gambling for decades. What has changed is not the principle—the technology, speed, access, marketing, and scale have all changed. And these elements justify much more sophisticated regulation. They don't justify a sudden discovery that gambling is morally acceptable when choosing six numbers on a card, but a threat to civilization when choosing the winner of a game.
The correct discussion, therefore, should not be "How to end betting?". It should be: "How to build a regulated, responsible, monitored and sustainable betting market that protects the vulnerable without treating millions of adults as incapable of making their own decisions?"
This question requires more work. It demands numbers. It demands regulation. It demands technology. It demands oversight. It demands treatment for those who develop addiction. It demands combating the illegal market. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit so well on a political platform. “Let's end gambling!” produces a much better speech.
And in the end…
If someone sincerely believes that every bet necessarily represents money taken from family and savings, then they will have to apply this principle to all types of bets. Including those that have existed for decades.
But if we recognize, as Brazil itself has long recognized, that gambling can exist under regulation, taxation, control, and social responsibility, then the discussion about betting must start from precisely that same principle.
This is not about defending irresponsible gambling. Much less about minimizing gambling addiction. It's about avoiding a curiously selective conclusion: the problem cannot depend on who prints the ticket.
A Brazilian who spends money beyond their means betting on football has a problem. A Brazilian who spends money beyond their means on the Mega-Sena lottery also has a problem. Just like someone who compromises their family budget with alcohol, credit cards, shopping, or any other compulsive behavior.
What needs to be fought is abuse. Not a three-letter English word.
Because banning vodka while allowing beer has never solved alcoholism. And banning one form of gambling while preserving others is unlikely to solve problematic gambling.
However, he can produce excellent speeches. And in an election year, that may be precisely the bet with the highest probability of return.
