The Second Coming: Brazil President Lula Threatens To Ban iGaming

For millions of Brazilians President Lula is up there with the country’s other Gods: Pele, the arbiter of the Beautiful Game, the musical genius Milton Nascimento, Rio de Janeiro’s giant Christ The Redeemer.

Now in his Second Coming as leader of this South American giant no-one, it seems, understands the minds of his people quite like the diminutive demiurge: They want, and They don’t want sports betting.

For Lula, full name Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has warned that he will ban online betting if nascent regulation–set to go live on the first day of the coming New Year–does not “cure” gambling addiction.

Critics may concur that Lula’s last minute intervention–just as the world’s iGaming heavy-hitters, led by Flutter Entertainment, Entain and Betsson, have spent millions, if not billions, buying a piece of the Brazilian gaming action by partnering-up with local players–is a classic ploy by this master politician.

“If regulation doesn’t work, I won’t hesitate in putting an end to [gambling] definitively,” Lula asserted this weekend, as he spoke to reporters after casting his vote in municipal elections in Sao Paulo, the country’s economic capital.

Addiction

Sports betting in this football-mad nation of 212 million was legalized in 2018 but until late existed in a murky world of off-shore, tax-avoiding operations.

While Brazil’s government administrations of both Lula and his now-disgraced predecessor Jair Bolsonaro grappled with how to bring-in gambling’s vast potential tax income, studies show that millions of Brazil’s poorest families–many of them in receipt of the equivalent of social credit, the “Bolsa Familia”–were getting into debt and sinking under the weight of addiction.

All this, quite suddenly, has become a major political issue — just as Brazil has become the fifth-largest gambling market in the world, with an impressive list of iGaming companies newly-licensed to operate some 200 betting brands.

This month the nation’s Central Bank released figures that showed that Bolsa Familia social welfare beneficiaries spent an estimated three billion reais (£420m/US$550m) on gambling in August alone.

Referring to Brazilians’ love of illegal cock-fighting and gambling on an illicit 19th Century-origin numbers game known as “Jogo do Bicho”, Lula is wise and realist enough to know that an outright ban will have little traction.

“Everyone knows that the person going to buy bread in the morning will make a small bet using the bread money,” recounted the president.

“But what I cannot allow is betting to turn into a disease, an addiction, and for people to become dependent on it, because I know people who lost their house and car,” he affirmed.

Watch this space.

Additional Reporting by Jordi Bacardi