Brazil's Treasury wants to treat betting like tobacco
The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva once again distanced itself from online betting, this time through its Minister of Finance. In an interview with Rádio Metrópole in Bahia, Dario Durigan stated that the president dislikes the platforms and that, if it were up to him, he would have already ended the activity, a sentiment the minister himself said he shared. Even so, he clarified that the official strategy does not aim for a direct prohibition but rather to tighten regulation and controls.
The key to the approach is to prevent an abrupt shutdown from pushing players into the clandestine market. Durigan maintained that the challenge is to build a path of greater rigor without giving oxygen to illegal operators, and for this reason, the government rules out, at least for now, any project to eliminate betting. This definition adds to Lula's recent statements, who days earlier had demanded that platforms provide a social purpose justifying their permanence and had suggested ending the activity if they did not have one.
To explain the origin of the problem, the minister pointed to the period from 2018, when fixed-odds betting was authorized, to 2023, when the current regulatory framework began. In those years, he said, the platforms operated practically without rules and took advantage to establish themselves in football, confederations, advertising, radio, and television, gaining a solid place in the economy. With this interpretation, he defended the work initiated in 2023 to bring order to what he described as the anarchy inherited from the administrations of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro.
Regarding upcoming measures, Durigan drew a parallel that anticipates the official orientation: treating betting like tobacco. He recalled that cigarettes are subject to high taxation and that Brazil is cited as a successful case in reducing smoking, and he proposed replicating that logic of high taxes and progressive restrictions to lower consumption without removing the activity from legality. The tightening is already evident in various measures, including new advertising restrictions and mechanisms to limit access for certain groups, and according to the data cited by the minister, 5 million people are already prevented from betting due to official blocks, and another 1.2 million have requested self-exclusion, totaling 6.2 million excluded from regulated platforms.
Tags: Dario Durigan, Tobacco model for betting, Online betting in Brazil, Self-exclusion