Lula's Upset Win Keeps Brazil's Ban On

Key Takeaways

Betting Licenses Lapsed on Election Day

Lula won Brazil’s presidential runoff on Oct. 25 with 51.79% of valid votes to Flávio Bolsonaro’s 48.21%, the Superior Electoral Court announced on Sunday night.

The win was an upset, historically and on prediction markets, too. Lula had lost the Oct. 4 first round to Bolsonaro, and no presidential candidate has made a comeback in the runoff before. On Polymarket, which is blocked in Brazil, his chances traded as low as 17.5% during voting day before the final results came in.

The revoked betting licenses issued under Brazil’s 2023 gambling law expired on the same day as the presidential runoff, and the result suggests there is not going to be a change in the current direction of policy. In a YouTube livestream with federal deputy André Janones on Oct. 22, Lula said online betting would not return to Brazil, according to Poder360.

“I can tell you, Nath: betting won’t come back anymore. Whoever wants to make money should go to work,” he told influencer Nath Finanças, who joined the stream. Recounting a meeting with young people in debt from betting, he added: “We have to put an end to this plague, because if we don’t, betting will put an end to the Brazilian people.”

The measure Lula signed on Sept. 25 bans operating, offering, intermediating, and advertising fixed-odds betting, covering both sports betting and online casino games, including from operators based abroad. It states that the license cancellations are in the public interest and entitle operators to neither a refund of their license fees nor compensation. The 85 licenses cost R$30 million each (nearly $6 million USD), or R$2.55 billion in total (about $508 million USD).

The industry’s remaining hopes lie with Congress and the Supreme Court. The lawmaking branch has until Nov. 23 to vote on the measure, which starts blocking its agenda on Nov. 9, according to the Senate’s schedule, and the deadline can be extended once by 60 days. The joint committee that must review the measure, which drew 99 amendments, has not yet been installed.

Justice Luiz Fux, who is handling challenges from industry associations, media companies, and football clubs, is expected to decide after the runoff whether to keep or suspend the ban, Poder360 reported. The Attorney General’s Office has asked him to keep it in force, after it called the laws behind the licensed market unconstitutional.

The ban is already costing jobs. The National Association of Games and Lotteries said on Oct. 7, citing a preliminary survey, that more than 3,500 workers—or 23% of the sector’s workforce—had been dismissed since the measure was issued, with another 4,167 on collective leave. It projected that dismissals would reach 5,600 within 90 days.

The local media is also waiting on Fux. The Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (Abert) has asked him to suspend the measure, arguing that its members are direct targets of the advertising ban and that “the damage is already underway.”

“The state that created the market, charged for entry into it, and supervised its operation undid, in 30 days and by unilateral act, the legal positions it had itself established,” the filing says.