Colorful, bright and with mentions of large cash prizes, scratchcard cards have been part of the landscape for almost three decades in most cafes, newsstands and lottery shops in Portugal, one of the European countries with the record in per capita spending on this bet type.
In 2021, the Portuguese disbursed around € 1.5 billion (R$ 8.25 billion, in last Friday’s quotation, 2) with the game. In the same year, Spain, despite having a population four times larger, with 47.33 million inhabitants, spent half the Portuguese amount: €750 million (R$4.1 billion).
With popularity come problems. Entities that treat game addicts warn of the high number of scratch card addicts, with an aggravating factor: low-income women are the most affected group.
In Portugal, casinos, bingos and other types of betting are legal. Among all the modalities, scratch card is the second most popular, according to the most recent information from Sicad (Service for Intervention in Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies), an agency linked to the Ministry of Health.
The data, released in 2021, but referring to 2017, already showed this advance — 30% of Portuguese said they were playing scratchcards. Of these, almost a third earned less than 500 euros a month.
“Between 2012 and 2017, in the general population, the prevalence of abusive gambling [considerado uma forma mais suave de vÃcio] quadrupled, from 0.3% to 1.2%, and pathological gambling [que caracteriza a fase da dependência]doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%”, says the document. “The scratch card went from third to second most used cash game in the country, behind only [da loteria] of Euromillions.”
To find out the real dimension of the problem, the Economic and Social Council –an advisory body that serves as a bridge between the government and civil society– this year commissioned a broad study on scratchcards in Portugal. The work will be carried out in partnership with the University of Minho.
“The per capita consumption of scratch cards in Portugal is very high and, when compared with countries like Spain, the differences are very significant”, says psychiatrist Pedro Morgado, a professor at the institution and one of those responsible for the work. “In clinical practice we find many cases [de pessoas viciadas] and it is known that high consumption levels mean higher risk of addiction.”
In 2020, the doctor published in The Lancet, one of the main international health journals, an alert about the “neglected threat” of the growth of scratch cards in the Iberian country.
The idea is that the study helps to characterize gambling addiction in Portugal. For specialists, the scratch card has features that make it particularly addictive, such as ease of access, in addition to the low initial bet values, from € 1 (R$ 5.40), and the possibility of instant reward.
An employee at a restaurant on Avenida Almirante Reis, one of the main thoroughfares in central Lisbon, Celeste Fonseca says she is used to seeing customers lose control with the game, officially called the instant lottery. “They order a coffee and a scratchcard. Then another card, and then another. I’ve sold 50 scratchcards to the same person that way,” she says.
In the evaluation of the clerk, who has worked at the establishment for 15 years, although there are those who clearly lose control with gambling, most customers make occasional bets. “With salaries in Portugal, who doesn’t want to try their luck? Any little money is welcome”, ponders Celeste, remembering that the current minimum wage in the country is 705 euros (about R$ 3,870) per month.
According to Sicad, more than half of scratch card players in the country are women between 35 and 54 years old, with low educational level and monthly income of €500 (R$2,750) to €1,000 (R$5,500).
In the Lancet article, the Portuguese researchers draw attention to the fact that economic issues related to the betting industry, including “taxes collected by governments”, can result in “lack of effective policies to regulate specific types of games”.
In Portugal, the so-called social games, which include lotteries and scratch cards, are also an important source of revenue for the government. They are managed by Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Lisboa.
In 2021, of the almost €2.9 billion (R$15.9 billion) of gross revenue from social games, €816 million (R$4.4 billion) went to the Portuguese State, which allocated the amount to various institutions , including the Ministries of Health and Education, regional governments and Santa Casa itself, indicated the newspaper Expresso.
In recent years, specialists have demanded a more active stance from the government on scratchcards. Projects that limited the advertising and sale of cards, however, did not advance in Parliament.
In 2021, the Ministry of Culture announced a special scratch card to finance Portuguese cultural heritage. Although it received mixed reviews, the project went ahead. A little over a year later, however, the current head of the department, Pedro Adão e Silva, announced that the initiative will be discontinued.
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