Individuals receiving benefits will be barred from online gambling in Brazil
The Federal Government announced that it is in the process of implementing a measure that prohibits beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família and the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC) benefits programs from placing bets on betting sites. The action aims to prevent government funds from being used on online gambling platforms. A total of more than 20 million families will be affected by this new directive.
The initiative arose following a determination from the Supreme Federal Court (STF) that the Federal Government should implement measures to control the access of this demographic to betting platforms. This decision was subject to review by the plenary session of the STF, which unanimously supported the ruling. At the end of 2024, a survey by the Central Bank (BC) showed that over R$ 3 billion had been spent on betting sites by just over 5 million beneficiary families of Bolsa Família. Of this total, 4 million individuals are heads of families who directly receive funds from the government.
Initially, the Government’s action was to block the Bolsa Família card from being registered on the platforms. However, this measure proved ineffective, as gamblers were using benefit money through personal cards to register on sites according to Lance! one of Brazil’s leading sports newspapers.
Now, the government measure stipulates the blocking of the CPF (Brazilian individual taxpayer registry) of all beneficiaries of the programs. As a result, no card or other payment method, such as Pix, can be used by bettors on these platforms.
The Secretary of Prizes and Bets of the Ministry of Finance, Regis Dudena, stated in an interview with the newspaper Estadão that the process is currently in the phase of legal alignment to enter the practical phase. According to Dudena, a data collection system for all betting houses authorized by the Federal Government will be created to accurately account for the volume of bets and the number of program users on the betting platforms.
“The decision leaves us with some degree of uncertainty about what exactly the Supreme Court wants us to do. One issue is that it talks about resources, and not about people. Another difficulty is that the decision talks about Bolsa Família, BPC and similar programs without saying what it means by that,” said Dudena in an interview with the newspaper.
