EXCLUSIVE: Brazil, blessed with its vast Amazonian rainforest, spectacular northern desert of Lençóis Maranhenses and sprawling southern Pantanal wetlands, is known for its fascinating array of strange and exotic animals; but none as unique as the Pushme-Pullyou, otherwise called: “I can’t quite make my mind up about the benefits of sports betting.”
After recent frenzied months–if not years–of dangling the carrot of untold riches and promise before the world’s top, and not so top, iGaming companies with the lure of regulation and effective legalisation, the government of diminutive President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, once a Leftist firebrand, still a populist, albeit considerably quietened, has abruptly pulled-up at the moment of legal climax.
According to highly-placed sources, who have contacted iGamingFuture, the Lula administration now has serious doubts about legalising sports betting in this essential, sports-mad, nation of 215 million people that straddles South America as a giant.
Where this puts leading sports betting and online gambling heavy-hitters, such as Flutter Entertainment and Swedish-origin Betsson, who have just invested millions in co-ventures with Brazilian betting companies, is anyone’s guess.
Nebulous
Much has been written in these pages, and those of our trailing rivals, about the potential benefits of finally bringing Brazil’s considerable off-shore, often nebulous, gambling operations in from the non-Regulated cold.
Extensive betting on sports is a de-facto reality in this nation of multiple football world champions, who were the first to put the “beauty” into the so-called Beautiful Game.
But according to iGF’s high-level sources, who have asked for anonymity, President Lula (pictured above) and his Workers’ Party, while desperate for the potentially vast tax income, are also intimidated by the scope and depth of gambling addiction in the country, the largest nation by land mass and population in Latin America.
Brazil’s government backed the Congressional approval of the law regulating on-line sports betting in December.
But the ruling Workers’ Party is now seeking to review the legislation.
The party has reacted to a flurry of data showing that soccer-crazy and bet-loving Brazilians are addicted and spending too much of their income on bets, bankrupting households.
Gates of Hell
“We underestimated the harmful and devastating effects this caused to the Brazilian population. It’s as if we had opened the gates of hell, we had no idea what this could cause,” Workers’ Party president Gleisi Hoffmann said last week.
And she posted a swingeing attack on gambling on social media calling aspects of the betting business “perverse”, with particular emphasis on advertising curbs saying that gambling ads should be banned, or strictly controlled, as are promotions for tobacco and alcohol.
A study by Brazil’s Central Bank released last week said 24 million Brazilians had spent some 20.8 billion reais (£2.85bn/US$3.8bn) on bets in the month of August alone, based on the amounts transferred digitally from bank accounts.
Even worse, say Brazil’s influential lobby of anti-gaming lobbyists, the study showed that five-million of those bettors are beneficiaries of the government’s conditional transfer program for low income families called Bolsa Familia and that they spent three billion reais on bets in that month (£431m/US$550m).
Kitchen Casino
Astonishingly, this is the equivalent of 20 percent of the funding by the social program that is a government showcase.
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York, also last week, President Lula revealed his current thinking on the freighted gambling issue in his nation.
“We are noticing in Brazil the indebtedness of the poorest people trying to make money by placing bets. It’s a problem that we will have to regulate,” Lula told reporters.
“Otherwise soon we will have a casino operating in the kitchen of every house,” the president said.
One way, or another, it looks like this Brazilian “kitchen” is about to burn down.
Watch this space.
Additional Reporting by Jordi Bacardi
