Every country you go to, CBI that you find. In Brazil the government subsidy program is called Shopping bag Family and was created by President Lula in 2003, only to be dismissed by Jair Bolsonaro but reinstated by Lula, elected in 2022 for a third term. Today, there are over 20 million beneficiaries of the support income, one in ten Brazilians, and without a doubt this has been very useful in reducing extreme poverty, which under Bolsonaro had reached alarming levels, with 16 million Brazilians who, according to UN statistics, lived in a state of serious food insecurity, that is, they had great difficulty feeding themselves. With the return of Lula, the figure has been drastically reduced, even if there is no lack of controversy over how the 14 billion reais (about 2,3 billion euros) that the State recognizes monthly to Bolsa Familia recipients are spent. In Brazil, in fact, the online sports betting market is booming and, like all other transactions, those on gaming sites are also carried out through the subsidy card. Thus, the Central Bank recently discovered and communicated that in the month of August alone, and only by having access to online and therefore traceable operations, 3 billion reais were spent on bets dai beneficiaries of citizenship income Brazilian, that is, 20% of the total amount paid out each month by the government to everyone.
Betting in Brazil: Central Bank issues gambling alert
They bet, according to the mapping of the Central bank, 5 million people (a quarter of the beneficiaries), and 70% of them were fathers: this category alone spent 2 billion reais in one month, two thirds of the total. These data, which however the financial institution later admitted could be inaccurate, have generated indignation not only for the way in which public money is spent, but also for a socially increasingly worrying phenomenon: now the Brazilians spend on sports betting, in particular on the Calcium, over 21 billion reais per month, 200% more than in January. "This is generating effects on defaults, especially among lower incomes," he warned Roberto Campos Net, president of the Central Bank, who believes the trend can be explained precisely by the popularity of betting: "Everything suggests that this will lead to a deterioration in the quality of credit in the country". Not to mention that this also affects the regularity of sports competitions, so much so that last year Brazil was hit by a soccer betting scandal that led to the disqualification, in some cases for life, of 11 players from the local Serie A. This year, however, it was the turn of the betting agencies themselves to end up in the sights of investigators: two of them, Sports Betting by Luck e Go to Bet, I am accused of money laundering of money, in which the famous singer is involved Gusttavo Lima, famous a few years ago also in Italy for the hit “Balada”.
Lula government aims to legalize sports betting
In all of this, the Lula government he thought of legalize and regulate sports betting sites, which to date are effectively clandestine, or rather rely on Internet domains in other countries. From 1 Jan. 2025 all companies will have to be regularly registered, which however will generate according to experts a further boom in betting, which will in fact be cleared by customs. The difference is that now the state will gain in taxes, as it already does from the lotteries from which it collects almost 2 billion reais per month. But is it worth it, given the risk of a social bomb? Already today 86% of gamblers go into debt to gamble, even spending part of the Bolsa Familia contribution, and 64% are in arrears. "We have always been against gambling," President Lula recently said, "but it was a problem that had to be addressed and regulated. If the regulation does not work, we will immediately go back." In the meantime, the government has already announced that the citizen's income card can no longer be used on sports betting sites.
