The neighbor's ant and the elephant inside the house.
It's easier to see the neighbor's ant than the elephant in your own house.
Few phrases explain the current debate about the betting industry in Brazil so well.
On one hand, part of the government, the media, and other sectors of the economy found in betting a convenient explanation for a series of problems that the country has historically carried: indebtedness, loss of purchasing power, informality, lack of financial education, low savings capacity, fragile mental health, and pressured consumption.
It's clear that the betting market needs to be regulated.
It clearly needs to be monitored.
It is clear that operators who fail to fulfill their obligations should be punished.
Severely.
But to portray the betting industry as the sole, simple, and comfortable cause of Brazil's structural problems is, at the very least, a cowardly way of ignoring our own backyard.
Gambling didn't invent household debt.
They did not create income precarity.
They did not produce a lack of financial education.
They are not the origin of the mental health crisis.
They are not responsible for the low purchasing power.
They don't explain the financial turmoil of millions of Brazilians.
But they became an easy target.
The neighbor's ant.
Visible.
Convenient.
The problem is that this same logic also appears within the betting industry itself.
The regulated market rightly points out the magnitude of the problem represented by the illegal market.
This criticism is correct.
But the illegal market cannot serve as a shield for the regulated market to stop looking inward.
Having a .bet.br domain name isn't enough.
Having a Responsible Gaming policy published on the website is not enough.
Simply displaying "gambling responsibly" at the bottom of the advertisement is not enough.
The difference between the regulated market and the illegal market needs to become apparent in practice.
In the operation.
In the test of care for the bettor.
In identifying warning signs.
In adopting preventive measures.
In its ability to demonstrate that the company saw, understood, acted, and documented.
The regulated market is right to demand a tough crackdown on illegal activity.
But he reacts badly to any criticism about his own shortcomings.
It's impossible to demand stricter enforcement against those who break the law while simultaneously treating Responsible Gaming as a peripheral issue within the home.
It's impossible to point the finger at the illegal website and ignore the lack of effective mechanisms to protect bettors in regulated operations.
You can't demand institutional respect without building operational trust.
Criticism of the illegal market is necessary.
But it does not absolve the regulated market of its own obligations.
And the same applies to other convenient comparisons.
"And what about the tobacco industry?"
"And what about alcoholic beverages?"
"And what about revolving credit on the card?"
"And what about the banks?"
This mechanism has a name: whataboutism.
Instead of addressing the criticism, the focus shifts to the other person's problem.
Of course, other sectors have their elephants too.
The tobacco industry has.
The alcoholic beverage industry has.
The financial system has it.
But the fact that other sectors have their own problems does not diminish the responsibility of the industry we want to build.
The betting market needs to stop using external comparisons as a form of moral anesthesia.
The question is not whether other sectors also make mistakes.
The question is: what are we doing now with the risk that we already know about?
This is perhaps the most troublesome point.
The regulated Brazilian industry has an opportunity to prove that it is different.
But this difference needs to be built in practice.
With operators willing to acknowledge that Responsible Gaming is neither a cost nor a cosmetic obligation.
It is a central part of the social license to operate.
The neighbor's problem might actually be real.
Often it is.
But that doesn't make the elephant in the house any less of a problem.
And when the elephant is ignored for too long, there's no point in blaming the ant.
He's the one who knocks down the wall.
(*) Thiago Iusim is the founder and CEO of Betshield Responsible Gaming, a Brazilian company specializing in technology for Responsible Gaming in the regulated betting market. Betshield develops behavioral monitoring solutions for early identification of risk signs, support for preventive measures, and recording of operational evidence.
