The online gambling craze affects many in Brazil

Rio de Janeiro: Fernanda, a cleaner in Rio de Janeiro, lists the items she sold to feed her online gambling addiction, one of millions of Brazilians caught up in a gambling craze that has swept the country.

“I lost everything,” said the 34-year-old, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. “I sold my TV, my washing machine, everything in my house.”

Six years after Brazil legalized online sports betting, Latin America’s biggest economy is battling what Finance Minister Fernando Haddad has called a “pandemic,” prompting the government to tighten the screws on sector

Brazil’s central bank estimates that 24 million of Brazil’s 212 million people, about one in nine people, bet online on sporting events or on games like Aviator, Fernanda’s favorite, where players play the flight of a virtual plane.

Online gambling will “empty the fridges of Brazilians,” warned Joao Pedro Nascimento, president of Brazil’s securities regulator (CVM).

Sports betting sites now sponsor most of Brazil’s top soccer clubs and flood TV channels and social media with ads featuring stars like Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior.

But in recent months they have come under increasing scrutiny, with experts warning of the risk to users’ mental health and finances, and reports of money laundering by betting sites emerging.

In a recent report, the central bank revealed that five million beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família state subsidy for poor families – one in four of all beneficiaries – had spent a total of three billion reais or about 540 million of dollars in betting sites in August.

“Many poor people get into debt while trying to make money gambling. We will have to regulate (the sector). Otherwise, we will soon have a casino in every kitchen,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in late September.

Casinos and other gambling venues have been banned in Brazil since 1941.

The turning point came in 2018 when sports betting was allowed on the condition that it was properly regulated and that the proceeds were taxed.

Six years on and the regulations, such as the underage gambling ban, have yet to come into effect, with the measures only coming into effect in January.

Meanwhile, several hundred betting sites, most of them based abroad, operate in a kind of wild game of chance, with no rules imposed and no taxes paid.

The Brazilian government recently published a list of around 200 betting sites that are licensed to operate after accepting the new regulations.

About 2,000 more sites will be blocked starting today.

Hermano Tavares runs a treatment program for compulsive gamblers at the University Hospital of Sao Paulo.

The number of patients he sees has risen sharply since 2018, but he said the real “explosion” in numbers came after the 2022 soccer World Cup.

“It’s one of the most dangerous addictions after crack,” Andre Rolim, a 39-year-old recovering player, told AFP.

Rolim, an engineer who grew up in an affluent family in the northeastern city of Fortaleza, racked up huge gambling debts and encountered suicidal thoughts before entering treatment.

The National Gaming and Lottery Association, which represents some of the biggest betting sites, defended the industry in a statement to AFP, insisting that “only a small proportion of all players, around 1% at 1.5%” sticks.

However, he admitted that addiction was “extremely harmful” to those affected and their families, and said he was in talks with NGOs about developing prevention strategies.

Fernanda’s savior was her sister, who, she said, “took the phone out of my hands” and confiscated it to force her to stop gambling.

“Without my family I would never have gone through this,” he acknowledged. —AFP