Lula escalates Brazil’s bets crackdown rhetoric, says he has “personal willingness” to end online betting

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has again taken aim at fixed-odds betting platforms, this time comparing their spread to crack and saying he has “personal willingness” to end online betting. For PSPs and acquirers, the important part is not the rhetoric itself but the direction of travel: a senior political campaign against a licensed gambling channel that now comes with public pressure, fiscal tension, and the usual question of whether regulation moves one way while politics moves another.

1. In an interview recorded on Wednesday (16/9) at the Palácio da Alvorada for the Desce a Letra Show podcast, Lula said the rise of “bets” has a family-level damage comparable to the impact of crack in Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. He said he personally wants to eliminate the product, while adding that any final decision would still depend on listening to society and building support inside government.
2. Lula backed up the point with two anecdotal cases he said he had heard directly: a man who accumulated R$ 2.2 million in debt after selling a shop, a car, and his father’s land, and a 27-year-old woman with R$ 730,000 in debts. The framing is clear: this is now being presented as a household-debt issue, not just an entertainment or tax-policy debate.
3. The interview was not a one-off. It was the sixth public statement against the sector since his May 1 speech. The sequence the article gives runs from May 1, when Lula criticized the legalization of bets and announced that anyone joining the debt renegotiation program Desenrola 2.0 would be blocked from betting platforms for one year, through May 22, September 1, September 13, September 14, September 15, and finally September 16, when he raised the tone again and said he had the personal willingness to end online betting.
4. On May 22, speaking on Sem Censura (EBC), he said he intended to defend an end to bets during the 2026 election campaign, while acknowledging that any legal change would depend on Congress. That matters for operators because it is the practical constraint: the political message is getting harder, but the legislative path still runs through Congress.
5. The article also points to the fiscal contradiction that BNLData has been documenting through the year: the government is attacking the sector publicly while remaining dependent on the tax revenue it generates. The text says this tension is especially visible in the first year of regulation, which is where the detail stops for now.

For high-risk payment providers, Brazil’s signal here is simple enough: the sector is not being treated as a normal consumer category in the political conversation. That does not automatically change acquiring rules tomorrow, but it does increase the odds that banks, PSPs, and partners will have to factor in tighter scrutiny, more reputational sensitivity, and less room for complacency around gaming flows.