Brazil’s Michel Temer says he does not celebrate the 2018 sports betting law

Former Brazilian president Michel Temer has revisited one of the most contested decisions of his administration: signing the law that created legal sports betting in December 2018. The point for high-risk PSPs is simple enough: Brazil’s betting framework did not appear out of nowhere, and even the man who signed it now describes it as an emergency compromise rather than a decision he would applaud.

1. In an interview with Frente a Frente, from Folha and UOL, hosted by Daniela Lima and Fábio Zanini, Temer said he does not “celebrate” the legalization of sports betting, although he stopped short of saying he regrets it.
2. He said the signature came at the end of 2018 under heavy political pressure. At the time, the Brazilian debate was focused on legalizing casinos, but resistance to that plan was equally strong. Temer said he chose sports betting as a middle ground, describing it as a “lesser evil” and the most reasonable exit available to him.
3. Temer also made one useful clarification for anyone trying to map Brazil’s regulatory timeline: signing the framework law did not mean the sector went live immediately. The detailed regulation arrived years later, during Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government, and Temer said that sequence had been expected from the start.
4. The interview also touched on the scale of the problem. The journalists cited a Datafolha survey saying 35% of Brazilians have gambling-related problems. Temer agreed that the issue worsened once betting moved to mobile phones, because people no longer had to go to a physical venue to play.
5. He said illegal gambling already existed before the law, with clandestine rooms offering roulette and bingo in residential areas across the country. What changed, in his view, was distribution: smartphones pushed betting into neighborhoods and communities that had not been reached before.

Asked what he would do now, Temer said he would prefer stricter regulation and tougher oversight over a total ban. He floated one concrete restriction: blocking access to betting for recipients of Bolsa Família, arguing that if the state transfers the money, it has the right to set guardrails around how it is used.