G1 survey: Congresso Nacional in favour of gambling regulation

A large swath of Brazil’s federal deputies are in favour of regulating the nation’s gambling sector. Grupo Globo’s news portal g1 published an 18 question survey handed out to all 513 parliamentarians in Brazil’s federal chamber. Receiving responses from an impressive 332 deputies.

The g1 survey found that 58% of the participants would be in favour of regulating the gambling sector in the South American country. The g1 covered a much wider scope such as taxation, refugees, legal weapons distribution, and gambling regulations.

Regarding gambling, a large number of responses were in favour of further regulation, perhaps not a majority but this still indicates there is legal discourse to be had regarding the topic.

What was statistically notable was that the deputies towards the political right showed more general resistance to divulge their opinions to the survey. Thus skewing the results into a more progressive proportion. 3% of the deputies did not answer the particular question pertaining to gambling, while a surprising 35% did not complete the full questionnaire.

Viewing the statistics from a more whole perspective, 38% of the chamber were in favour of regulation with 24% opposed.

Gambling law in Brazil

The legislation in Brazilian law regarding gambling regulation is peculiar to say the least. “Gambling” as a concept does not exist in Brazilian law, interestingly, the word does not even have a direct translation into Portuguese. Instead the phrase “jogos de azar”, games of chance.

These games of chance have been prohibited in Brazil under a general ban dating as far back as 1941. The only outliers to this steadfast rule were horse-race wagering and the state monopoly of the lottery. Casinos are clearly completely illicit, with bingo and slot machines seeing the light of day in the 1990s through to the early 2000s before they were banned yet again. What is also important to note is that poker is not an illicit activity as it falls under a regulated law involving skill as a defining factor and not luck.

Since gambling activities remain completely unregulated and are set in law, judicial precedent is widely accepted and applied to illicit infringements in Brazilian courts.

With the release of g1’s survey, hopes will soar ever higher for the impending regulatory bill due to be passed later this year. Roughly 25 million Brazilians already engage in weekly betting activities so the opportunities and benefits on all fronts in such an abundant market make the prospect of an entirely new industry being erected immensely exciting.

SiGMA Americas

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