Lula bans fixed-odds sports betting a week before Brazilian elections

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has signed an bid banning fixed-odds sports betting conscionable implicit a week earlier the archetypal circular of the statesmanlike election, successful a determination helium said was designed to tackle the pervasive occupation of families falling into debt.

The determination ends the operation, offering, intermediation and advertizing of betting.

The provisional enforcement bid comes into unit instantly but volition request legislature support wrong 120 days to stay successful effect. It prohibits caller deposits into accounts and gives users of betting platforms until 5 October to retreat their funds.

Lula’s authorities has besides drafted a measure to found transgression offences related to fixed-odds betting – the astir communal and ascendant benignant of online sports betting – specified arsenic promoting them and utilizing idiosyncratic information to solicit punters.

“I made the determination to instrumentality a hard, drastic and indispensable measure,” helium told journalists successful São Paulo. “It’s similar cancer, you instrumentality retired the tumour, oregon the tumour volition termination us.”

Lula had besides criticised the betting manufacture earlier this week astatine the UN wide assembly, accusing it of “transforming addiction into profit” and of “destroying homes”.

Polls suggest a prohibition enjoys wide enactment among Brazilians. Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula’s main rival successful the coming election, accused the existent person of an “electoral measure”.

Brazil’s president has sharply criticised online betting astatine slightest since April, erstwhile helium called for a ban. The nationalist backlash against it grew during the Fifa World Cup erstwhile advertisements were ubiquitous and the fig of radical betting surged.

Betting and gambling are estimated to outgo Brazilian nine 38.8bn reais (£5.6bn) annually and increases termination and depression, according to a 2025 survey by the nonprofit Institute of Studies for Health Policies.

The country’s cardinal slope estimated past twelvemonth that Brazilians walk astir 30bn reais connected bets each month. That fig included spending by beneficiaries of the cash-transfer national payment programme Bolsa Familia (family grant), which was blocked from those platforms past year.

Lawmakers, including galore from Flávio Bolsonaro’s Liberal party, struck down a Lula bid for taxation hikes connected online betting and virtual casinos successful October past year.

Gambling is amerciable successful Brazil, but the state opened the gates to online betting successful 2018 during the presidency of Michel Temer. The improvement snowballed nether the ticker of the erstwhile president, Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro’s father.

In December 2023, Lula signed a instrumentality to modulate and taxation betting companies for the archetypal time. Months later, his medication blocked much than 2,000 online betting websites that were designated arsenic irregular, including immoderate linked to transgression organisations specified arsenic the First Capital Command from São Paulo and the Red Command of Rio de Janeiro. It was portion of a nationalist propulsion to modulate the sector.

Lula and members of his medication person spoken astir banning online betting arsenic indispensable to adjacent a drain to the country’s system and to tackle a nationalist wellness issue, arsenic galore Brazilians are addicted and successful fiscal difficulties owed to spending their wealth connected these platforms.

Business analysts accidental that revenues for sports betting, 1 of the betting models banned connected Friday, are estimated astatine much than $4bn (£3bn) per twelvemonth successful Brazil, 1 of the biggest markets successful the world.

Before Friday’s move, Brazil’s main shot clubs sounded the alarm aft betting companies reportedly warned that their sponsorships would extremity instantly if the authorities banned betting.

They said the determination could pb to the extremity of Brazilian football, a assertion mocked by immoderate societal media users successful the football-mad country.