President (candidate) Lula proposes throwing away the sofa.

Everyone knows the joke about the guy who comes home and catches his or her spouse in the act with their lover on the living room sofa. Outraged, he or she makes a drastic decision to ensure it never happens again: he throws the sofa out the window.

The anecdote is old, but it remains useful for explaining certain regulatory impulses. Instead of addressing the root cause of the problem, the most visible obstacle is eliminated—even though this solves absolutely nothing.

Something similar appears in the recent debate about fixed-odds betting in Brazil. In speeches and interviews, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated that if regulation does not solve the problems associated with betting, he could simply eliminate so-called "bets." The statement is politically powerful, generates headlines, and signals social concern. However, from an economic and regulatory standpoint, it reveals a rather superficial understanding of how this market works.

The first misconception is to imagine that prohibition eliminates the activity. Economic history shows exactly the opposite. The demand for gambling exists in virtually all societies and has endured centuries of prohibitions, restrictions, and moralizing. Digital platforms have only broadened access and transformed sports betting into a form of mass entertainment. Millions of Brazilians already bet regularly. This didn't happen because the government authorized it—it happened because technology made it possible.

When there is consolidated demand and the State decides to prohibit the activity, the predictable result is not the disappearance of the market. It is its migration to illegality. This was the case with casinos in Brazil after the 1946 prohibition. This was the case with Prohibition in the United States. And it would be exactly the same with online gambling.

Banning the game doesn't eliminate it. It just changes who operates it.

Today, Brazil is in the midst of building a regulated fixed-odds betting market. This model includes licensing, taxation, anti-money laundering rules, user identification mechanisms, responsible gaming policies, and sports integrity monitoring. All of this exists because the State decided to bring an activity that already occurred in practice into a regulated environment.

A potential ban would do the exact opposite: it would drive out legal operators and leave the market in the hands of illegal operators, both local and offshore. Gamblers would continue to bet—they would just do so on sites without control, supervision, or any commitment to complying with Brazilian law.

In this scenario, the very instruments that allow for mitigating the problems frequently pointed out in public debate disappear: access control for minors, betting limits, self-exclusion mechanisms, transaction traceability, and cooperation with authorities.

It's a curious logical inversion: to combat risks, the system that allows them to be controlled is eliminated.

There is also an economic dimension that is often ignored in this discussion. A regulated betting market generates significant tax revenue, direct and indirect jobs, and a substantial investment chain in technology, marketing, media, and sports. Just consider the sector's impact on the financing of Brazilian football. A large number of clubs today depend on sponsorships from betting companies.

Banning the sector doesn't eliminate these financial flows — it merely shifts them to illegal operators who don't pay taxes, don't invest locally, and have no regulatory obligations.

In other words, the country would still have gambling. It would just stop having revenue, jobs, and sponsorships.

Perhaps the central point is simpler than it seems. The real choice Brazil faces is not between "having bets" or "not having bets." That choice simply doesn't exist. The activity is already incorporated into the digital consumption behavior of millions of people.

The real choice is between having regulated betting or having illegal betting.

This doesn't mean ignoring the problems associated with gambling. Debt, excessive advertising, and compulsive behaviors are real risks and deserve serious regulatory attention. But precisely because these risks exist, prohibition is a bad answer. It doesn't solve the problem—it only eliminates the state's ability to regulate it.

Banning betting to solve gambling problems is like throwing away the couch to solve infidelity.

The scene changes location — but it continues to happen.

(*) Luiz Felipe Maia is a lawyer and partner at MYLaw Advogados, internationally recognized as a leader in the gaming and betting industry.