“I lost everything, I sold my TV, my washing machine, everything I had at home. Without my family, I would never have got over it’… The story of “Fernanda”, a 34-year-old cleaner who bet her entire salary on a betting website, is typical of the scourge that afflicts households in Brazil.

Fernanda (she changed her name to preserve her anonymity) lives in Rio de Janeiro and is not the only case, as the country’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, speaks of a “pandemic”, judging that it is case of emergency.

Online betting “will empty the fridges of Brazilians,” warned Joao Pedro Nascimento, president of CVM, the stock exchange authority of Latin America’s largest economy.

Activity operating practically without safeguards since 2018

Casinos and other games of chance have been banned in Brazil since 1941. In 2018 a law allowed online betting to operate, provided the activity is controlled and subject to taxation.

The “bets“, as websites that offer betting on sporting events, but also on games such as Fortune Tiger or Aviator, which Fernanda played, are well-known in Brazil and number approx. 24 million followers in the country of 212 million inhabitants, according to the Central Bank.

They sponsor most of the major football clubs and flood television and social media with advertisements featuring stars such as Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior.

The authorities intend to put an end to ‘betting’ advertising, imposing the same restrictions as on tobacco or alcoholic drinks, to stop ‘television harassment’.

Also, online betting companies do not have age restrictions (ieare directed at minors). Also several hundreds of “bets” operate without rules, without paying taxes and a large number of these companies, based abroad and mainly in “tax havens”.

They gamble even the poverty allowance

The Brazilian press devotes headlines to alleged money laundering scandals involving illegal websites. In fact, a recent study by the Central Bank resulted in a “social bombshell”, as it revealed that five million beneficiaries of the Bolsa Familia benefit (including the benefit paid to the poorest families), they carried out transfers totaling three billion reais (approx. 500 million euros) on betting sites, last August alone.

This number, it is 25% of beneficiaries and nearly 20% of payments from the government’s flagship social program this month.

“Many poor people get into debt trying to make money through betting. We have to fix the problem, otherwise we will soon have a casino in the kitchen of every home,” the country’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula, said in late September.

For Hermano Tavares, coordinator of a treatment program for compulsive gamblers at the Institute of Psychiatry of the University Hospital of São Paulo (USP), the regulation should focus on the mental health of users:

“Whatever the state can gain in tax revenue, it can lose by overburdening the health system.”

The number of patients on his program has grown significantly since 2018, but he has particularly noticed “an explosion” since the 2022 FIFA World Cup, with patients “much younger than before and close to the age of 30”.

“Some people suffer from anxiety or depression disorders that can encourage compulsive gambling,” explains Anna Lucia King, founder of the Delete Institute, where Fernanda was hospitalized for several weeks, on the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

“He is one of the most dangerous addictions, after thek,” says Andre Rolim, a 39-year-old former compulsive gambler.

Coming from a wealthy family in the town of Fortaleza, Rolim, who is an engineer, found himself in debt and said he had “suicidal thoughts“, before undergoing a long treatment.

The National Association of Gaming and Lottery (ANJL), which represents some major betting sites, confirms in a press release sent to AFP, that “the coercive problems associated with online betting only reach a small part of the total number of players, class of 1 to 1.5%”.

However, he acknowledges that these cases “are extremely harmful to gamblers and those who come into contact with them”, pointing out that he is “in discussions with NGOs working on the psychological support and treatment of compulsive gamblers, with a view to cooperation and with the aim of prevention”.