Brazil Senate: Lottery Revenue for Nursing Homes Bill Advances
The Economic Affairs Committee of the Brazilian Senate approved this week, in a final vote, Bill 1.130/2025, which allocates part of the revenue from federal sports lotteries to finance long-term care institutions for the elderly. The initiative, presented by Senator Jayme Campos (União-MT) and reported by Senator Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF), now moves to the Chamber of Deputies, unless an appeal is filed to vote on it in the Senate plenary.
The text amends Law 13.756 of 2018, the general framework for federal games and lotteries, and incorporates the so-called ILPIs (Long-Term Care Institutions for the Elderly) into the list of civil society entities benefiting from the net income of three contests per year of the sports betting lottery, where bettors try to predict football match results. Currently, the National Federation of Associations of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional, the Brazilian Red Cross, and the National Federation of Pestalozzi Associations already receive funds through this channel.
According to the proposal, non-profit ILPIs registered with the competent health surveillance body and with the municipal council for the elderly, or its equivalent in the Federal District, will be eligible to receive funds. The bill introduces a specific provision: institutions may access the resources even if they have outstanding tax debts with the Union, a caveat designed not to exclude entities with administrative difficulties but with a proven social function.
In justifying the bill, Jayme Campos argued that the choice of sports lotteries as a funding source responds to the magnitude of their revenue, which offers a stable and continuous base for institutions to improve their infrastructure and services. Rapporteur Damares Alves emphasized that these entities focus their attention on a population that accumulates economic, health, nutritional, and mobility vulnerabilities, and that Brazil's demographic aging will increase demand in the coming years.
Damares also stressed that the proposal does not generate economic or financial impact for the Union, as it involves a reallocation within already collected lottery proceeds and does not imply new public expenditures. This argument is relevant in a fiscal scenario where any creation of benefits usually faces resistance from the Economic Board, but it also illustrates a trend: using gambling revenue to support social policies without touching the general Treasury coffers.
The Brazilian movement is part of a broader trend across Latin America. In various countries in the region, part of the political discussion about the expansion of online and land-based gambling revolves around the social destination of the revenue. Brazil, with a regulated market in full growth, strengthens with this initiative the idea that sports lotteries can function as a stable funding tool for priority social programs, in this case linked to an increasingly numerous and vulnerable population.
Tags: Brazil, Brazil betting, Brazil lotteries, betting and lottery revenue, nursing home lotteries