Folha says Lula has dropped the betting ban from Brazil’s runoff campaign as club backlash and Janja comments expose the damage

The betting ban that was supposed to help Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round has become an awkward subject in the second. A Folha de S.Paulo review of 46 videos from Lula’s YouTube channel shows how fast the campaign retreated once the political cost became obvious — and that matters for any PSP watching how quickly regulated gaming policy can turn into a payment and sponsorship problem.

1. Folha said the average number of mentions of “bets” per video fell from 11 in the first round to four in the runoff against Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), after Lula ended the first stage with about 2 million votes more than his rival.
2. In September, the month the government announced and issued MP 1.394/2026, “bets” was Lula’s eighth most-used word, ahead of education. The topic appeared in every video on his channel between 1 September and 4 October. After the first round, the campaign removed betting from radio spots and left it out of the Band debate on Sunday (18), something BNLData had already noted in the TV Globo interview on 15 October.
3. The shift also reached football. According to Folha, Lula stopped talking about clubs after backlash from executives and fans, which peaked with Flamengo and Fluminense’s protest at the Fla-Flu on 11 October. The campaign replaced bets with messages about ending the 6x1 work schedule, forgiving micro-entrepreneur debts, and attacking the opponent directly.
4. Folha also cited an SBT News report saying first lady Janja da Silva, in tears, regretted that the end of bets had not produced the expected first-round victory.
5. On Monday (19/10), Minister of the Secretariat-General of the Presidency Guilherme Boulos met in São Paulo with representatives of 35 supporter groups from clubs across the country. The government notice said the discussion was the situation in football after the betting ban. Boulos acknowledged that the ban affected club funding, said the government is discussing alternatives, but has not defined specific measures. His proposed fix was a permanent working group to discuss supporters’ demands and the impact of lost sponsorships.

The political point is blunt: the campaign is now chasing the same football audience it pushed away with MP 1.394/2026. For high-risk payment providers, the useful takeaway is not the election drama itself, but the mechanics behind it — when betting flows, club sponsorships, and public policy collide, the commercial fallout shows up fast.