Bets stayed out of Brazil’s second-round debate as Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro avoided the issue

At the first head-to-head debate of Brazil’s second round on Sunday (18), neither Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) nor Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) mentioned the government’s ban on online betting. For high-risk payment providers, the silence matters because the policy that was supposed to reshape the market is now absent from the campaign’s main stage.

1. The debate, hosted by Band, came one week before the October 25 vote, and the betting ban was not raised once by either candidate. This was the first direct encounter of the runoff, after a campaign that had been dominated by confrontation, corruption accusations, and arguments over security and the economy.
2. The government had put betting front and center. Medida Provisória 1.394/2026, signed on September 25, banned fixed-odds betting and online casinos. Lula framed it as a response to household debt, and Finance Minister Dario Durigan went as far as calling the election a “plebiscite of bets.”
3. The political bet did not pay off. Flávio finished the first round with 47% of the vote, against Lula’s 45%. In the following days, Lula’s own campaign reportedly concluded, according to O Globo, that the ban had hurt the result. Lula also skipped any mention of bets during Thursday’s (15) TV Globo interview, although he did talk about debt.
4. Lula returned to the topic on Friday (16) in Ipatinga (MG), but only as ammunition against an opponent. After Flávio had lunch with Globo’s top executives, Lula attacked the broadcaster and said it was “angry” because he had “ended bets.” The policy stopped being presented as public policy and became campaign material.
5. Flávio had his own reason to stay quiet. Hours before the debate, it became public that the Federal Police had sent an investigation to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to examine suspected money laundering involving the senator and lawyer Willer Tomaz. The PF says there are indications that Tomaz in practice controls Rede Loto, the first company authorized to operate sports betting in the country, after Loterj granted it accreditation in May 2023. Tomaz’s defense says Rede Loto “never operated as a betting platform” and criticized the leak “a few hours before the debate.”

What dropped out of the debate was not a minor regulatory footnote. Missing too were the 30,000 reports of suspicious websites recorded after the legal operators left, the clubs left without a master sponsor, and the future of the MP in Congress and at the STF. For operators, PSPs, acquirers, and banks that had been watching Brazil for a clear signal, the question remains open: what will each candidate do with the “Bets MP” from January 1?