Brazil blocks 6.2m from betting as Lula hardens stance

Brazil’s Finance Minister Dario Durigan said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would have ended the country’s betting market outright if the decision had been his alone, as government data shows 6.2 million people are now blocked from licensed platforms.

“President Lula says he doesn’t like betting and, if it were up to him, he would have ended betting.”

Durigan set out the government’s position as restriction and taxation rather than prohibition. A ban, on the Finance Ministry’s reading, would move players to unlicensed operators and remove the tax base the licensed market provides.

Who is blocked

The 6.2 million figure splits into two groups. Around 5 million people were blocked by government measures. A further 1.2 million registered voluntarily for self-exclusion.

The involuntary blocks run on CPF matching against federal databases. They cover recipients of Bolsa Família, the country’s main cash transfer programme, and of the Continuous Benefit Payment (BPC), which supports elderly and disabled people on low incomes. Participants in the Desenrola debt renegotiation programme are also barred.

Reporting on Ministry of Finance data puts the sub-totals at roughly 3 million social benefit recipients, 794,181 people in arrears under government programmes and 33,123 tied to the Fies student financing scheme. The Betting Management System (Sigap) records around 40 million active users, putting the restricted group at about 12.5% of the registered player base.

Of those who self-excluded, 35.93% cited loss of control over their gambling or mental health concerns, and 20.63% wanted to stop their personal data being misused. Two thirds, 66.95%, asked to be excluded indefinitely, while 21.6% chose one year. The platform also gives users free educational material and a mental health self-assessment tool.

Taxation rises to 15% by 2028

“We have to treat betting like cigarettes, which have high taxation.”

The tax path is already set in law. Complementary Law 224, signed in January 2026, raises the levy on gross gaming revenue (GGR) from 12% to 13% in 2026, then to 14% in 2027 and 15% from 2028. The first step took effect in March 2026 after the constitutional 90-day waiting period. Licensed operators must also direct 1% of revenue to social security this year, rising to 2% in 2027 and 3% from 2028.

The same package created CIDE-Bets, a contribution the government projects at around BRL 30 billion a year, earmarked for the National Public Security Fund.

Regulatory history

“We had to start work back in 2023 to end the anarchy left by the Temer and Bolsonaro governments.”

Fixed-odds betting was authorised in 2018 under Michel Temer through Law 13,756, without a regulator, a licensing regime or player protection rules. Law 14,790 of 2023 created the framework, licensing began in January 2025, and the centralised self-exclusion platform launched in December 2025.

Election-year pressure

Brazil votes on October 4, 2026, with Lula seeking re-election. In April the Workers’ Party filed Bill PL-1808/2026, which would ban fixed-odds betting outright and repeal both the 2018 and 2023 laws. Lula said on August 14 that betting should end unless someone shows him a social reason to keep it, two and a half years after signing the law that legalised it.

Rival candidates have taken the same line. Novo’s Romeu Zema said on August 18 that his first act as president would be to shut down online betting. São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas has attacked the regulation over household debt. Flávio Bolsonaro has proposed restricting the use of federal social programme funds for betting, which largely restates measures already in force. A betting caucus in Congress, the bancada das bets, remains an obstacle to any repeal.

Durigan’s comments set the limit on how far the Finance Ministry intends to go before October. Blocking lists and the self-exclusion register are the two tools the government can widen without new legislation, and both cut into the licensed player base without touching operators outside the system. The question for licensed operators is which category comes next: another benefit programme, another debt scheme, or advertising.

Source: Ministry of Finance