Guilherme Boulos meets organized fan groups in São Paulo to discuss football after Brazil’s BETS ban

Brazil’s Secretariat-General minister, Guilherme Boulos, is meeting organized football fan groups on Monday in São Paulo to talk about “the football scenario after the BETS ban” and fan demands. For payment providers and clubs, the useful detail is not the optics — it is that the government is treating the ban as a live policy framework while the measure is still heading through Congress and facing a challenge at the Supreme Court.

1. The meeting is scheduled for Monday, 19/10, at 14h at the Presidency office on Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo. According to the government notice, the agenda covers “the scenario of football after the BETS ban” and the demands of organized supporters.
2. The official note speaks of around 30 fan groups, but the published list includes 23, plus the Associação Nacional das Torcidas Organizadas (Anatorg), which is listed first. That placement matters because Anatorg is not entering the room as a neutral observer.
3. During this year’s campaign, Anatorg posted a list of “official candidates” on Instagram. The post named Lula (13) for president, Juninho (12.095) for state deputy in Santa Catarina, and Alex Minduín (1312) for federal deputy in São Paulo. The text also asks to confirm whether Alex Minduín is Alex Sandro Gomes, former president of Anatorg.
4. Claudinho do Espírito Santo, president of the association and former president of Força Jovem do Vasco, went further: he presented Benedita da Silva (PT) as “Anatorg and Organized Fan Groups’ candidate” for the Senate in Rio, asked for votes for state deputy Zeidan (PT), and posted a photo with President Lula holding the group’s flag.
5. The meeting comes less than a week before the second round of Brazil’s presidential election, in which Lula is seeking re-election. That timing makes the political composition of the room harder to ignore, especially because the agenda already frames the debate as happening after the ban rather than around whether the ban should be revisited.

There is one practical wrinkle here: in September, when clubs and federations released a manifesto against the restriction on bets, Anatorg accused club boards of prioritizing their own interests and offered to take proposals to the government. Days later, on 25 September, Lula issued MP 1.394, which banned the sector. The notice for Monday does not propose reversing that decision, even though the MP still needs a vote in Congress and is being challenged at the STF.

The government did include some dissenting voices. Three of Flamengo’s eight fan groups — Raça Rubro-Negra, Flamanguaça and Torcida Jovem do Flamengo — are on the list after signing a note on 12 October against the MP. They said the ban was abrupt and threatens club finances. The question is whether those groups will carry any real weight in a room headed by an association that campaigned for the president and a government that has already written the policy as if the outcome were settled.