Lula is demanding answers from the Central Bank regarding gambler's Pix payments, but the government already has tools to curb abuses with betting platforms.
In a campaign live stream on Sunday night (September 13, 2026), President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) once again attacked the sports betting sector and stated that he had met earlier that day with eight people whom he described as "victims of betting." While recounting the meeting to supporters and digital influencers of his reelection campaign, Lula cited the case of a gambler who allegedly made 1.400 transactions via Pix (Brazil's instant payment system) in three months and publicly questioned why the Central Bank had not identified the pattern of these transactions.
"Today I met a guy who made 1.400 Pix payments in 3 months, and the Central Bank hasn't noticed that's too many Pix payments for the same company? Are we passive in the face of a society that is killing itself with debt? Are we passive within a society that is driving people crazy, because it's an illness. People are going crazy, thinking about killing themselves, about leaving home. So we're going to work seriously."
The president also said he spoke with a woman who “saw her 26-year-old son kill himself” and that he was “in a meeting where the guy owed R$ 2 million in just 3 months.” He reaffirmed that he is “discussing” what he will do with the betting companies and that his intention is to “shut down” the betting companies, classifying the market as “something uncontrollable.”
The question that remains for the Central Bank
By directing the accusation to the Central Bank—and not to his own economic team—Lula is shifting a responsibility that, by law, belongs to the Ministry of Finance to an agency that does not regulate the betting sector. The body that authorizes, monitors, supervises, and sanctions fixed-odds betting operators in Brazil is the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA/MF), not the Central Bank—and the SPA itself already has a system designed precisely to capture this type of individual transaction pattern.
SIGAP already exists and receives daily data from each bettor.
Since the beginning of 2025, the Betting Management System (Sigap) — developed by Serpro for the SPA/MF — has been monitoring licensed operators daily. According to the Treasury's rules, companies are required to send six types of files to the system: five daily and one monthly. These files include registration data for each bettor and the movement of their wallet — that is, how much money entered and left the account used for betting, specific files for sports betting and online games, and a broader daily overview of each company's operations. This means that oversight does not depend on consolidated balance sheets at the end of the month: the SPA receives activity data from the platforms practically in real time and can also request additional information from the operators when deemed necessary.
In other words: if a single bettor made 1.400 Pix payments in three months to the same company, that is exactly the type of pattern that Sigap was designed to capture — in the agency that answers to the Lula government itself, not in the Central Bank.
Centralized self-exclusion, a tool launched by the government itself.
Since December 2025, the Centralized Self-Exclusion Platform (gov.br/autoexclusaoapostas), developed by Serpro at the request of SPA, has been online. With a single registration via a gov.br account (silver or gold level), citizens can block access to all authorized betting sites at once, make their CPF (Brazilian taxpayer ID) unavailable for new registrations in the sector, and stop receiving targeted advertising from betting companies. Operators have up to 72 hours to implement the block after being notified, and the platform itself indicates SUS (Brazilian public health system) service points for those who need mental health support.
The tool was created by an interministerial working group that brought together the Ministries of Finance, Health, Sports, and the Presidency's Communications Secretariat—the same government that now, through the president's voice, seems to be attributing to the Central Bank a monitoring failure that should fall under its own supervisory structure.
A mental health network has also been announced by the government.
In launching the self-exclusion initiative, the Ministries of Finance and Health also announced the creation of the Brazil Health and Electronic Betting Observatory, a telehealth service for people with gambling-related problems (in partnership with the Sírio-Libanês Hospital, scheduled for 2026), training for teams in the Psychosocial Care Network (RAPS), and a mental health self-test available through channels such as WhatsApp, Meu SUS Digital, and the OuvSUS service (136). Data from the government itself shows that consultations for gambling disorder in the SUS (Brazilian public health system) increased from 2.262 in 2023 to 3.490 in 2024, with 1.951 already registered in the first half of 2025 alone.
The sector's actual size in GDP.
There is also a problem of proportion behind the presidential discourse that betting is largely responsible for the indebtedness of Brazilian families. According to a report from the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting itself, the regulated market grossed (GGR) approximately R$ 37 billion in 2025 — the number most cited by the government ranges from R$ 36,7 billion to R$ 37 billion. In the same year, Brazil's GDP totaled R$ 12,7 trillion, according to data released by IBGE. This places the gross revenue of the entire regulated betting sector at less than 0,3% of the national GDP — a small fraction compared to the size that the presidential discourse suggests when it attributes to betting a central role in household debt, a phenomenon that has multiple and much broader causes, such as the cost of credit itself, inflation of essential items, and informality in the labor market.
The missing priority: combating illegal betting.
If the president's concern for indebted gamblers is genuine, the most effective target is not licensed companies—subject to Sigap regulations, self-exclusion, regulated advertising, and taxation—but the clandestine market, which remains significant in Brazil. A survey by LCA Consultores, based on research from the Locomotiva Institute, commissioned by the Brazilian Institute for Responsible Gaming (IBJR), estimated that between 38% and 44% of online bets in the first half of 2026 still occurred on clandestine platforms—a level that, despite having fallen compared to the 41% to 51% range measured in 2025, remains among the highest in the world, behind only the Netherlands. It is precisely in this universe without Sigap, without mandatory self-exclusion, and without any obligation for responsible gambling that the risk to the bettor tends to be greater — and it is there that the government's discourse and oversight efforts should be intensified, instead of aiming at closing the market that is already under supervision.
The contrast that Lula's speech exposes
The president's speech insists on portraying a "passive" state in the face of the suffering of indebted gamblers. But Lula's own government has already put into operation, throughout 2025 and 2026, three concrete fronts to deal with precisely the cases the president reported in the live broadcast: daily financial monitoring via Sigap, centralized voluntary blocking via self-exclusion, and a mental health care network via the SUS (Unified Health System). The question that remains is why these tools, created by the government's own economic and health team, did not prevent—or were not used in time to prevent—the cases Lula described, and why public criticism falls on an institution, the Central Bank, that is not directly responsible for overseeing the sector.
Furthermore, previous measures by the government itself had already restricted advertising by betting companies and blocked access for beneficiaries of the BPC (Continuous Cash Benefit) and Bolsa Família (Family Allowance) programs to betting sites—which reinforces that the regulatory framework under construction since Law 14.790/2023, sanctioned by Lula himself, already provides instruments to protect bettors. The announcement that the president is "discussing" what to do, and is considering "closing" the betting sites, comes at the same time that electoral polls show a tight race between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro for 2026, with Sunday's live broadcast being part of a day of mobilization by the PT (Workers' Party) around the candidacy for re-election.
