Haddad’s Brazil betting remarks clash with his own regulation record and disputed GDP impact claims

Fernando Haddad said he would ban bets in São Paulo and tied that position to the economic damage he attributes to online gambling. The catch is that the fact-checks say he himself helped regulate the sector at Brazil’s Ministry of Finance, and the GDP figures he cited do not come from an official, continuous measurement.

1. Estadão Verifica checked two statements Haddad made in an interview with Estadão on Friday, 18/9, and rated both as “lack of context.” The focus was online betting, which Haddad said he would confront if elected governor of São Paulo.
2. On the first point, Haddad said Governor Tarcísio de Freitas authorized bet-style betting in São Paulo and that he would ban the activity. The fact-check confirmed that in 2022 the São Paulo state government granted the private sector a new Loteria Paulista. The Consórcio SP Loterias paid R$ 526 million for a 15-year contract, and the state estimates revenue of more than R$ 3.4 billion over that period. Since 1 July this year, the São Paulo state lottery has operated on a website with a “.bet” address, offering online instant lottery games.
3. What the fact-check says is missing from Haddad’s argument is that he himself worked to regulate bets while serving as Minister of Finance. In 2023, the ministry issued an ordinance requiring licensing with the federal government and a headquarters in Brazil for betting companies to operate in the country. In other words: the bets were not banned; they were given operating criteria.
4. On the economic impact claim, Haddad said bets affect between 0.5% and 1% of Brazil’s GDP and used that as the main argument for ending betting houses. Estadão Verifica said there is no official consolidated measurement with a continuous methodology for that effect. The available references are estimates from different sources, with different ranges.
5. Those estimates vary. In August, a study by the Center for Research in Macroeconomics of Inequalities (Made) at the Faculty of Economics, Administration, Accounting and Actuarial Science of the University of São Paulo (FEA-USP) estimated that betting removed between R$ 120 billion and R$ 141 billion from economic activity in 2025, equal to 0.9% to 1.1% of GDP. Santander, using 2024 data, calculated that bets have the potential to reduce GDP by 0.2% to 0.3%. Haddad’s range overlaps partly with the Made estimate, but he did not cite a source for the figure.

For high-risk operators, the useful detail is the regulatory one: Brazil has not treated online betting as a simple prohibition story. The Ministry of Finance set operating conditions, and the debate is now about licensing, local presence, and the economic footprint of the sector rather than a clean yes-or-no ban.