Brazil's Licensed Betting Bodies Protest Being Shut Out of the Planalto

Three associations issued statements within hours of each other. All three make the same point: the regulator was missing too, and the figures presented to the president went untested.

• ANJL, ABRAJOGO and AMIG each issued statements on 2 September objecting to the exclusion of the licensed sector from President Lula's meeting on betting at the Palácio do Planalto the previous day
• ANJL president Plínio Lemos Jorge said excluding the segment from the dialogue "compromete a qualidade, a imparcialidade e a legitimidade", and asked for a new meeting structured as a technical and democratic debate
• ABRAJOGO said it repudiated the absence of regulated market representatives and called for "pluralidade, transparência, dados oficiais e participação dos agentes diretamente envolvidos"
• All three also point to the absence of the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas, the regulator inside the Ministry of Finance, and ANJL says data presented at the meeting contradicted official figures
• AMIG has asked for its own meeting with the president

Three Statements, One Complaint

The licensed Brazilian betting sector responded within a day to a meeting it was not invited to. On 1 September President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva convened more than four hours of livestreamed evidence at the Palácio do Planalto on the impact of online betting, attended by ministers, religious and business bodies, health and social organisations and cultural figures. No operator, no industry association and nobody from the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas appears on the reported attendance list.

On 2 September, three associations put statements out. ANJL, the national association of games and lotteries, was represented by its president Plínio Lemos Jorge, who said that excluding the segment from the dialogue "compromises the quality, the impartiality and the legitimacy" of it. ANJL asked the federal government for a new meeting, structured as a technical and democratic exchange including the regulated sector, wider society and the public authorities, and argued that the licensed market supports hundreds of thousands of jobs along with state revenue that flows to sport, culture, telecommunications and media.

ABRAJOGO said it repudiated the absence of regulated market representatives from the discussion, and that a debate of this kind requires "plurality, transparency, official data and the participation of the agents directly involved". It asked to be included in future discussions and drew attention to the regulator's absence. AMIG made a similar criticism and requested its own meeting with the president.

The common thread across all three is not simply that operators were left out. Each singles out the SPA, the unit that licenses and supervises the market and would have to implement any decision. ANJL goes further and says the data presented at the meeting contradicted official figures, which is a specific and checkable claim rather than a general complaint about tone.

Being Absent From the Room Is a Structural Problem, Not a Grievance

It is easy to dismiss trade bodies complaining about not being consulted, and on its own that would be unremarkable lobbying. The substantive point is the second one. A four-hour evidentiary session in which every participant shares a position, on figures that the sector says diverge from the government's own data, produces a record that cannot be corrected inside the process that made it. The president said afterwards that his decision was two-thirds made. Whatever one thinks of the industry, a policy formed on untested numbers is fragile in a way that has nothing to do with fairness to operators, because the first serious challenge to it will come from whichever figure turns out to be wrong. The regulator's absence is the sharper omission, since the SPA holds the licensing and enforcement record that would settle several of these disputes immediately.

The Sector Is Learning It Has No Standing in Its Own Policy Debate

Two things happened in Brazil this week that look unrelated and are not. The president heard evidence on betting without the industry or its regulator present, and a Senate rapporteur removed the 30% betting transfer to public security after lobbying from sporting bodies. In both cases decisions about the sector's money and its future were taken in rooms it was not in, by constituencies that do not need its agreement. That is the position of a revenue source rather than a participant, and no amount of post-hoc statements changes it. The associations are right to ask for a technical debate. Whether they get one will say more about their standing than the statements do.

Three trade bodies asked to be heard on the same day. The more consequential absence, on all three accounts, was the government's own regulator.