Brazil's Rapporteur Removes the 30% Betting Transfer From the Security PEC

The provision that would have routed 30% of fixed-odds betting revenue to public security is out of the report filed in the Senate's justice committee. It has not been voted on yet, and the sports bodies that lobbied against it stand to keep about R$500 million a year.

• Senator Rogério Carvalho (PT-SE), rapporteur on the Public Security constitutional amendment PEC 18/2025, has removed from his report the provision earmarking 30% of fixed-odds betting revenue for public security
• The Senate's own record shows the report was received by the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Committee on 1 September, with amendments 67 to 70 filed on 2 September; the measure remains in progress and has not been voted
• The deleted provision would have directed 30% of betting revenue to the national public security and penitentiary funds on a schedule running to 2028, reversing an earlier allocation we reported
• Carvalho argued the provision "substantially reverses the logic of distributing resources" from fixed-odds betting by protecting operators' costs ahead of the base that funds education, sport, social security and health
• Sports bodies lobbied for the removal, among them the Brazilian Olympic Committee under president Marco La Porta, the Paralympic Committee and Flamengo, with reported estimates of R$500 million to R$530 million a year of sports funding at stake

The Money Was Reallocated on Paper, and Now It Has Been Reallocated Back

PEC 18/2025, the Public Security constitutional amendment sent to the Senate by the presidency via the Chamber of Deputies, arrived carrying a provision that would have earmarked 30% of revenue from Brazil's regulated fixed-odds betting market for the National Public Security Fund and the National Penitentiary Fund, phasing in through 2028. Reporting identifies the clause as Article 139 of the Transitional Constitutional Provisions Act.

Senator Rogério Carvalho of the Workers' Party, representing Sergipe, was appointed rapporteur in the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Committee, and his report leaves the provision out. The committee's record shows the report was received on 1 September with a favourable vote, and that amendments 67 to 70 were filed on 2 September. The last update to the legislative data was logged at 09:18 on 2 September. The measure is still listed as in progress.

Carvalho's stated reasoning goes to sequencing rather than to public security. He argued the provision substantially reverses the logic by which resources from fixed-odds betting are distributed, because it protects the sums allocated to fund betting operations before the gross gaming revenue base is calculated. That base is what feeds the existing earmarks for education, sport, social security and health.

The push came from the sporting sector. The Brazilian Olympic Committee, represented by its president Marco La Porta, the Brazilian Paralympic Committee and the football club Flamengo lobbied against the clause, alongside a group of senators. Reported estimates put the sums at issue at between R$500 million and R$530 million a year that would otherwise have been diverted away from sports financing through the National Council of Sports Committees.

The procedural detail that matters is what happens if the deletion survives. Because removing a provision is not the same as inserting new text, an approved version would not need to return to the Chamber of Deputies and could go straight to presidential sanction. The stated intention is to bring the public security allocation back later as an ordinary bill rather than as a constitutional provision.

Betting Revenue Has Become General Budget Money, and Everyone Now Behaves Accordingly

The substance here is not about gambling policy at all. Nobody in this argument is proposing that operators pay more or less, that channelisation improves, or that anything changes for players. What is being contested is the order in which existing betting revenue is sliced, and which constituency holds the earlier claim. Two years after Law 14,790/2023, betting receipts have become a normal line in Brazilian fiscal politics, large enough for the Olympic committee and a football club to lobby a constitutional amendment over, and contested by ministries rather than defended by the sector. That is what a mature revenue stream looks like, and it is a more significant development for operators than the outcome of this particular vote.

The Sector Won Nothing Here, and Should Not Claim Otherwise

It would be easy to read a rapporteur citing the protection of operators' costs as a win for the industry, and it is not one. Carvalho's objection is that the drafting shields betting operations from the calculation, which he frames as a defect rather than a virtue. The industry did not lobby for this outcome and does not benefit from it: the same money is collected either way, and it simply lands in different funds. What the episode does establish is that the sector's tax base is now a resource other lobbies fight over without needing the sector in the room, which is the same pattern visible in the Planalto meeting this week where no operator or regulator attended. Being the money rather than a participant is a weak position, whichever fund wins.

The provision is out of the report. It is not yet out of the constitution, and the votes that decide it had not been taken when this was published.