BBB 22: No readjustment for 12 years, premium lost half of its purchasing power

The winner of Big Brother Brasil 22 will become a millionaire, but his purchasing power will be practically half that of Marcelo Dourado, the champion of the 10th edition of the reality show. That’s because, the value of the prize of the current edition remains the same as 12 years ago: R$ 1.5 million.

To be equivalent to that of 2010, the prize should now be R$ 3 million, according to a survey carried out by economist and researcher Matheus Peçanha from FGV-Ibre (Brazilian Institute of Economics of Fundação Getulio Vargas). He made the calculation based on the IPCA (Broad Consumer Price Index) from April 2010 to December 2021.

“The value [do prêmio] It has been more than ten years without readjustment and in this period we had two very strong crises. Between 2014 and 2015, we reached more than 10% inflation as well. And now [em 2021] we have a new double-digit inflation, which we haven’t seen for some time. Apart from year-to-year inflation, which eroded the value of the premium”, says the economist.

In the 12 months of last year, the IPCA, which is the official inflation indicator in the country, accumulated a variation of 10.06%. The increase is the highest for the period from January to December since 2015 (10.67%), when the national economy was going through a period of recession under Dilma Rousseff (PT).

In 2021, the IPCA surge was driven by a combination of disparate factors. There was a price rise in administered prices, such as fuel and electricity, an increase in basic items for families, such as food, including due to climate change that affected the planting and harvesting of different products, in addition to persistent disruption in the global supply chain of industrial inputs, especially chips.

Economist Matheus Peçanha ponders that the two times that the premium was readjusted — in 2005 and in 2010 — it was above inflation. In the first edition of the BBB, in 2002, the winner Kleber Bambam won R$ 500 thousand. The payment remained the same for three other editions until 2005, when it was readjusted to R$ 1 million.

“If it had been for inflation, the prize would have gone to BRL 655,000, that is, as it was BRL 1 million, it was a real gain of 52.5%. Jean Wyllys [vencedor do BBB 5] was the luckiest”, says Peçanha.

In the 2010 edition, the prize went to R$ 1.5 million. “If it had been for the inflation of the period, it should have gone to R$ 1.245 million. The lucky person this time was Dourado”, completes the economist.

Previous editions, however, have already shown that, in addition to the grand prize, the program can bring visibility and boost careers. Gil do Vigor, from the last edition, was not champion, but revealed in an interview with Forbes that he has already accumulated a fortune of R$ 15 million since leaving the BBB.