Betting bill: under pressure from polls, government trades regulation for campaign slogan.
All sources consulted by BNLData report that the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is preparing a Provisional Measure to restrict the operation of online betting, with the possibility of prohibiting online games and/or restricting marketing in the sector, maintaining only sports betting. The intention is to send the text to the National Congress this week. It is necessary to state clearly what this move is: less a response to a public health problem and a possible indebtedness of Brazilians – a possibility questioned by experts – and more an attempt to recover popularity less than 30 days before the elections.
What's on the table
According to a report by CNN Brazil, the Civil House is leading the drafting of the text, which is not yet finalized. Presidential aides are calculating the effects of restrictive measures and are not ruling out banning entire segments of the sector—online casinos and modalities of sports betting itself are in the crosshairs. There is internal disagreement: one wing of the government advocates for milder actions, focused on combating the illegal market and restricting aggressive marketing, while the Ministry of Finance—which has led the regulation of the sector in recent years—resists harsher measures due to the legal consequences that a radical ban could generate.
The choice of instrument is also revealing. The government opted for a Provisional Measure, and not a bill, precisely because of its immediate effect: the internal assessment is that a legislative proposal would face resistance in Congress and would not be able to be approved before the elections. In other words, it is not just about the content of the measure, but about the urgency of having it ready in time for the electoral calendar—and not the calendar of the problem it supposedly addresses.
In a meeting at the Planalto Palace last week—which representatives of the betting industry did not attend—Lula himself left little room for doubt about his personal position: "I, personally, would put an end to betting ," he stated, adding that the decision was already "two-thirds" of the way there and that all that remained was to sign it.
The real driving force: the election calendar, not the fight against gambling addiction.
The timeline leaves no doubt about what is driving the government. The Quaest survey released this Monday (7) showed that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) have 41% of voting intentions. The margin of error is 2 percentage points.
The latest Quaest poll already showed a technical tie between the two candidates, with Lula scoring 42% against 41% for the senator from Rio de Janeiro. Previous surveys by the institute had already indicated a progressive reduction in the gap between the Workers' Party candidate and the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL). On July 26, the gap between the two reached eight percentage points, with the current president having 45% of the voting intentions against 37% for his opponent.
The survey also shows that 50% of voters disapprove of the government, while 43% approve (in the previous round on September 2nd, the figures were 48% and 45%, respectively). However, when analyzing a longer trajectory, a negative trend for Lula becomes apparent: the balance was one negative point at the beginning of August, and today it is seven negative points.
The increase in debt also coincides with a period of deterioration in presidential approval ratings, while the percentage of those who consider Desenrola 2.0 a good idea fell from 50% to 43%.
Internal polls from President Lula's campaign show particularly high rejection of gambling among women and young people—precisely the demographics his reelection campaign most needs to win back. Furthermore, a Latam Pulse Brasil survey by AtlasIntel, already shown in April, indicated that 63,2% of Brazilians see only losses in online gambling, and 70% associate it with the financial ruin of families. However, the most troubling data for the Planalto Palace is another: 35,3% of those interviewed attribute the spread of gambling in the country to Lula's own government—the same spread that the Provisional Measure now promises to hastily contain.
It is no exaggeration to speak of radicalization: with the president and first lady Janja da Silva already lining up as enemies, and with their popularity in freefall, the political incentive is for the harshest possible gesture—not the most effective measure.
The contradiction that the government prefers not to discuss.
There is a fundamental inconsistency that no electioneering decree can resolve: the same government that is now considering banning entire segments of the regulated market is the one that structured the budget around the revenue from betting. The fiscal dependence on the sector's revenues does not disappear by decree. Banning online casinos and sports betting without addressing this dependence is promising a fight against the sector that the Union's own coffers cannot sustain until the end.
The foreseeable consequences for the gambler.
This is where electoral calculations exact their highest price—and it's not the government that pays. Any prohibition or severe restriction on the regulated market, without an equivalent enforcement plan against illegal activity, has a predictable and already documented effect in Brazil and other jurisdictions: the gambler doesn't stop betting, they migrate.
And it migrates to where it doesn't exist:
⇒ Self-exclusion — the same instrument that, according to data obtained via LAI (Law on Access to Information), has already registered more than 1,2 million people for betting in eight months, surpassing countries with decades of regulation;
⇒ Deposit limits, identity and age verification, or any responsible gaming mechanism required of the licensed operator;
⇒ Oversight of the SPA/MF, dispute resolution, and any formal complaint channel;
⇒ Taxation and financial traceability — which also means less data for the government itself to measure the problem it claims to be fighting.
The illegal market, currently estimated to represent between 38% and 44% of the total wagered in the country, does not require a license, is not subject to the actions of a Provisional Measure, and will not shrink simply because the regulated market has been curtailed. Historically, it grows precisely in the spaces that prohibition opens up. A measure that restricts the regulated operator without reducing the demand from bettors—and without tightening the net around illegal platforms—protects no one: it merely transfers the bettor from an environment with rules, data, and accountability to an environment lacking all three.
This dynamic is not an abstract hypothesis. Historical experience shows that purely prohibitive policies rarely eliminate widespread activities—they displace the activity to clandestine environments, lacking transparency, consumer protection, or institutional oversight. In short, regulation is not about encouragement; it's about assuming governance over an existing reality. It is this governance—and not the hastily decreed prohibition—that a provisional measure drafted under electoral pressure risks abandoning precisely when it is most needed.
Two axes that must not be confused.
The first is the public allocation of the funds raised: assistance, health, education, culture, sports, security, or other legally defined purposes. The second is the protection of the bettor: prevention of harm, responsible gambling, self-exclusion, prudential limits, responsible advertising, protection of minors, and support channels.
In terms of protecting bettors, the Brazilian scenario has already evolved—and it is precisely this progress that a rushed Provisional Measure risks ignoring or dismantling. At the federal level, the SPA/MF (Secretariat of Public Administration/Ministry of Finance) implemented a centralized self-exclusion platform for fixed-odds betting operators authorized by it and made it mandatory to define prudential limits for financial and time losses.
What remains
No one in the regulated sector denies that there are real problems to face, but the point is not to immunize betting from criticism or stricter regulation when justified by evidence. The point is that a Provisional Measure drafted under pressure from internal research, on the eve of an election, without debate with the sector and without a parallel plan to combat illegality, has all the characteristics of a campaign slogan—and none of the characteristics of a well-calibrated public policy. The Brazilian bettor, whom the government claims to want to protect, is the one who loses out from this protection first.
