Brazil’s Caixa executives visited Uruguay as speculation grows over a state betting monopoly

Three senior Caixa lottery executives were in Montevideo in the same week Brazil announced its provisional measure banning fixed-odds betting. That timing matters because Caixa already has the licence fee paid and the technology operator contracted, which makes it the only obvious state vehicle ready to step in if Brasília decides to reshuffle the market again.

1. According to a despacho signed by Caixa president and published on Tuesday (29) in the Diário Oficial da União, Gabriel Antunes Hess, Tiago Cordeiro de Oliveira, and Renato Silva Siqueira were authorised to travel abroad for an “institutional visit to the Government of Uruguay’s Fixed-Odds Betting company” from 24 to 26 September, at Caixa’s expense.
2. The visit came three days after Lula met Yamandú Orsi on 21 September in New York and said he wanted to learn about Uruguay’s experience, and it took place while the Brazilian government was announcing in São Paulo the provisional measure that eliminates the regulated market. In other words: the policy signal and the fact-finding trip landed almost on top of each other.
3. A market source quoted by BNLData says the president may be preparing a surprise for the sector: transferring fixed-odds betting to Caixa Econômica Federal, through Caixa Loterias, under a monopoly model. That is still just a market read, not a formal government announcement, but it is the kind of read PSPs and operators cannot ignore.
4. Caixa is not starting from zero. It has already requested authorisation from the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas (SPA/MF), paid the R$ 30 million licence fee, and held a tender that Playtech won to supply its technology operator. Even so, the operation never went live, with the bank’s management reportedly seeing betting as inconsistent with the president’s anti-sector rhetoric.
5. The Uruguay comparison is not flattering to the monopoly idea. Uruguay has a single authorised platform, Supermatch, operated under concession and state supervision, and it offers only fixed-odds sports betting. It does not authorise online casino or other online games. Yet the director of the Dirección Nacional de Loterías y Quinielas estimated the illegal gaming market at about US$ 700 million a year, while Supermatch reportedly turns over only US$ 30,000 to US$ 35,000 a day in normal periods.

For context: Uruguay has about 3.4 million inhabitants, versus the 25.5 million Brazilians who used authorised platforms in 2025. That gap is the whole story for high-risk payments people — market structure, channel mix, and the difference between a regulated betting business and an illegal one are not academic details when the state starts experimenting with ownership.