Lula’s move to ban online sports betting in Brazil has political appeal, but it does not fix household debt

Brazil’s federal government announced a ban on online sports betting on Friday, September 25, and the measure has clear electoral appeal. The problem is that, at least according to the polling cited by Valor, the public does not really see bets as the main driver of household debt — which makes the policy a neat slogan and a messy fix.

1. In a July 2026 Ideia poll, 56% of respondents supported a total ban on betting. The split by gender is politically useful for the government: 67% of women and 50% of men backed the veto.
2. Opposition figures treated the move as electoral theater, but none of them defended betting itself. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) called the announcement “eleitoreiro, hipócrita, populista,” while adding that he was personally against gambling. Renan Santos (Missão) said the provisional measure would expire. Ronaldo Caiado (PSD) said he voted against the issue when he was a senator and, as governor of Goiás, did not authorize lotteries in the state. Romeu Zema (Novo) had not commented by Saturday afternoon, September 26, despite criticizing betting throughout his campaign.
3. The same Ideia poll suggests the government’s debt narrative is weak. When respondents were asked which expenses contributed most to indebtedness, online betting was mentioned by only 2%. Supermarkets came first at 29%, followed by utility bills at 28%, rent at 14%, gasoline at 10%, education at 8%, health insurance at 7%, public transport at 6%, and condominium fees at 5%.
4. That matters because the policy is being sold as a debt-reduction tool, but the public mostly sees betting as something else: 33% described it as an addiction and 26% as a source of money loss. In other words, the government is trying to solve a debt problem with a measure the electorate does not strongly connect to debt in the first place.
5. There is also a data problem. Since online sports betting was regulated by Lula’s own government, bets have been registered from 43.8 million CPFs. Drawing a straight causal line from that volume of betting to rising delinquency is, as the analysis notes, difficult.

The package also includes Desenrola 3, launched on the same day. That program targets consumers already in arrears, as earlier versions did, and does not cover people whose income is becoming increasingly committed while they still remain current on payments. For PSPs and acquirers, the practical point is simple: Brazil is not just tightening around betting, it is also trying to separate “debt relief” from “income strain,” which are not the same customer problem.