Lula says he would shut down Brazil’s online betting market, setting up a fight with football clubs and PSPs

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used a campaign rally in Guarulhos on Friday, 18, to attack online betting operators, calling betting “a disease” and saying that, if it were up to him, he would end bets in Brazil. For high-risk payment players, that matters because the same debate now touches sponsorships, media spend, player protection, tax revenue, and anti-money-laundering controls.

1. Lula spent much of the rally answering a joint statement from football clubs and federations that opposed possible restrictions on the sector. He dismissed the claim that restricting sports betting would hurt Brazilian football, calling it “balela,” and said the country won the World Cup in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002 before bets arrived in Brazil.
2. He also framed the issue as a public-health question rather than a fiscal one, saying the fight against bets mattered more than any loss of tax revenue. In his words, the problem is not entertainment but “a disease called ludopatia” (gambling disorder), and he said he wanted to call the clubs in to talk about it.
3. Lula said the sector collected R$ 62 billion, but argued that the government was not focused on losing tax revenue. Instead, he said the priority was preventing the “life of the poor” from being consumed by gambling. That line is the important one for PSPs: the political argument is moving from taxation to consumer harm.
4. He also linked betting platforms to criminal activity, saying that any move to end bets would come together with a crackdown on money laundering. For operators, acquirers, and bank partners, that is the part to watch: once betting is cast as both a social and financial-crime issue, the compliance bar tends to rise fast.
5. The speech was delivered with Vice President and re-election running mate Geraldo Alckmin, São Paulo gubernatorial candidate Fernando Haddad, and Senate candidates Marina Silva and Simone Tebet on stage. Lula also used the rally to attack Banco Master and tried to connect the case to Flávio Bolsonaro, but the betting comments were the clearest signal for the payments industry.

The thing is, Brazil’s betting debate is no longer only about licensing and tax collection. If the government keeps pushing the “public health plus AML” frame, PSPs and banking partners will have to think less about growth in the vertical and more about how much political risk they are willing to underwrite.