Key agreement signed by Brazil’s Ministry of Finance to safeguard players
Brazil’s Ministries of Finance and Health have signed a five-year cooperation agreement to coordinate prevention, harm-reduction and care strategies for people affected by fixed-odds betting. Central to the plan is a new nationwide self-exclusion platform launching on 10 December, enabling bettors to block themselves from all licensed operators at once while giving health authorities data to support targeted interventions.
The Ministry of Finance, through the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA-MF), and the Ministry of Health, through the Secretariat of Specialized Health Care (SAES-MS), have signed a Technical Cooperation Agreement (ACT) for the execution of integrated and strategic actions aimed at prevention, harm reduction, and health care for people with problems related to fixed-odds betting. The document was signed by the Ministers of Finance, Fernando Haddad, and Health, Alexandre Padilha.
During the press conference, it was announced that the Federal Government will make available on December 10th , a Centralized Self-Exclusion Platform so that bettors can self-exclude, all at once, from all betting sites authorized by the SPA-MF.
Authorized betting sites were already required to offer bettors self-exclusion mechanisms from their respective websites and applications, but the Government’s system will allow bettors to voluntarily request, all at once, the blocking of their access to all accounts they have on betting sites, as well as making their CPF (Brazilian taxpayer ID) unavailable for new registrations and for receiving betting advertisements .
Additionally, the tool will provide information on healthcare service points within the Unified Health System (SUS).
According to the Finance Minister, the problems stemming from gambling have worsened due to the four years without regulation, from 2019 to 2022. “Our biggest problems are the use of gambling for money laundering and other crimes, and the deleterious effects of gambling on health. For the Ministry of Health to intervene, it needs information, and we have the information. We will identify the most worrying cases, both at the criminal and addiction levels, to pass the information on to the Ministries of Justice and Health. The teams are qualified to take the best possible approach,” stated Haddad.
The ACT creates permanent channels for the exchange of information and data between SPA and SAES to develop proposals for best practices for fixed-odds betting operators aimed at the consumer-bettor, and to create informational materials for the training of SUS professionals on the betting market. The ACT has a duration of five years, which may be extended.
The Secretary of Prizes and Betting at the Ministry of Finance, Regis Dudena, explained that the ACT is one of the outcomes of the partnership established between the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health, and other ministries in the Interministerial Working Group (GTI) on Mental Health and Prevention and Harm Reduction of Problem Gambling, whose final report was released at the end of September.
“Since December, we have had the GTI with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health, and other areas of the Government. This agreement formalizes an instrument for implementing real public policy, for exchanging information, and for reaching people who have health problems. We will inform the Ministry of Health about who these gamblers are, with utmost care, paying attention to the protection of personal data, so that they can implement the policy of caring for these people,” said Dudena.
