GloboNews panel criticizes Lula’s plan to ban sports betting in Brazil ahead of expected decree

On Monday, September 21, a GloboNews discussion on Estudio i turned the possible prohibition of sports betting in Brazil into a political argument, not a regulatory one. For high-risk payment operators, the useful detail is simple: the country’s debate is still about whether to ban the sector at all, not just how tightly to regulate it.

1. The broadcast, hosted by Andréa Sadi, devoted part of its Monday edition to Lula’s election challenges, with bets becoming one of the central topics. The discussion came hours before the federal government was expected to announce a provisional measure.
2. Reporter Pedro Figueiredo opened the segment with an unpublished Datafolha survey showing that Lula is the only president since Brazil’s return to democracy who has not managed to improve his government approval ahead of an election. According to the figures presented, the share rating Lula’s government as bad/terrible rose from 38% in July to 42% in September, while excellent/good moved only from 32% to 34% in the same period, within the margin of error.
3. Merval Pereira was the harshest critic of the idea of a ban. He called the government’s shift inconsistent, arguing that it created the tax on betting because it needed revenue and is now considering prohibition for electoral reasons. He later described the possible move as “scandalous” and said that if Lula did it in the last week of the campaign, it would go beyond the kind of political hardball Dilma Rousseff once described as “fazer o diabo” to win elections.
4. Pereira also corrected his own point to note that betting regulation did not begin under Lula, but under Michel Temer, with no regulation at the time and no tax collection throughout the Bolsonaro administration. In his view, Lula’s government only “charged a tax, because it needed to collect revenue,” so the criticism is not about taxation itself, but about an abrupt threat to ban the sector.
5. Valdo Cruz took the clearest anti-ban position. He placed the issue in its regulatory history — created under Temer, left unregulated under Bolsonaro — and argued that betting should remain allowed, but under stricter rules. The segment cut off before his full quote was completed, but his position was unambiguous: tighten enforcement, do not prohibit the activity.

For PSPs, acquirers, and banks touching Brazil’s betting flow, the point is not the political theater. It is that the market is still being discussed in terms of prohibition versus regulation, with the federal government signaling a possible move and major media voices openly pushing back on a ban.