As expected, Brazil has emerged as Latin America’s biggest betting and gaming market since regulation in January 2025. However, this status has come with extensive political scrutiny.
In a guest article for iGaming Expert, SBC News’ Editor Ted Orme-Claye takes an overview of the political situation facing Brazil’s still young gaming sector – but questions whether the government can keep its priorities straight…
After just 15 months, is Brazil’s experiment with fully regulated online betting already on the ropes? A recent change in tune regarding the sector from the central government in Brasilia suggests it soon will be.
President Lula da Silva appears to be preparing for a May 2026 legislative assault on online gambling. Though it doesn’t constitute an all-out ban, the plans show that the president and his Workers Party (PT) are not messing around.
The news was first broken by Lauro Jardim, a widely respected political journalist in Brazil, writing for the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo. The government’s motivation is to cut back on levels of indebtedness among Brazilians.
Lula is losing patience with ‘Bets’
President Lula signed off on the creation of the legal betting market, under the Bets Law (PL 2626/2023), in late 2024, despite some of his own personal objections.
On 1 January 2025, the local regulated market, known as ‘Bets’, went live with 63 initial licence holders, overseen by the Secretariat of Bets and Prizes (SPA), part of the Ministry of Finance. There are now over 83 licence holders operating some 197 brands between them.
The legal market has proven to be a winner from a tax perspective, with R9.95bn (£1.47bn) in tax revenue claimed from 2025 alone. However, the government has also become increasingly concerned about societal impacts, with some Ministers going as far as to say the market should never have been permitted.
These concerns led to government decisions like the ban on Bolsa Família and Continuous Benefit Payment (BPC) benefit recipients from betting in spring 2025. This excluded some 60 million people from the legal betting market.
A year down the line, the government remains concerned about indebtedness, with some 80 million Brazilians thought to be in some form of debt. However, SBC Noticias Brasil reports that the SPA figures show that wagering accounts for just 0.46% of household income across the country.
Under the government’s latest proposals, reportedly planned by the Ministries of Finance, Planning and Justice under the oversight of the president’s Chief of Staff, the people participating in the government’s debt financing programme will be prohibited from betting.
The government is also going over advertising and promotions, to some extent. Lula’s administration wants to ensure betting companies cannot encourage ‘compulsion and addiction’ via their advertising, something the government believes many legal companies have actively been doing.
Turning the screws on gambling
As mentioned above, Lula has never been overly fond of the gambling sector, but he has been making this opinion clearer and clearer over the past few months. At one point, he stated that the sector either needs to face much tougher restrictions, or be banned entirely.
“It’s not possible to continue with this unbridled game in this country,” the President said. “I’ve been discussing this business for 15 days… if they cause the harm we think they cause, why not end the bets? Or else regulate so that there are not so many in Brazil, if they have any use.”
The president has an election coming up in October 2026, and is prioritising economic growth and debt reduction. Part of this strategy has seen a focus on taxing the ‘three Bs’ of banking, billionaires, and betting.
After months of back and forth in the halls of Congress, the government was finally able to secure some steady tax rises on betting in December last year. The new framework is set to increase tax on gross gaming revenues (GGR) from the current rate of 12% to 15% in 2027 and 18% in 2028.
This has been followed by consistent rhetoric around gambling’s risks for both public health and personal finances, with a particular focus on advertising. Alexandre Padilha, Brazil’s Health Secretary, has made comparisons between gambling and cigarette smoking.
“For me today, the problem of gambling is an addiction problem on the same scale as the cigarette problem,” he said. “It is necessary to take more restrictive actions on betting advertising, as was done with cigarettes.”
However, for all its talk of restrictions, the government has fallen short on moving for an outright ban on betting – at least for now. While a bill to ban the market, Bill PL-1808/2026, has been proposed to Congress by PT Deputy Pedro Uczai, Lula’s government has not been officially endorsed by Lula or any senior members of his cabinet.
The president is likely facing a bit of a conundrum here. On the one hand, he wants to tax betting and gambling to help support his economic plans, but on the other he wants to see its visibility in society and perceived impact on debt cut back – the question is, can the two be balanced?
