Lottery in Brazil: São Paulo awards state contract to Aposta Vencedora
The consortium led by SAV Participações has won the Loteria Paulista concession.
Brazil.- Aposta Vencedora, a consortium headed by the Portuguese investors SAV Participações, has won the concession to operate the Loteria Paulista. The state lottery contract was awarded by the executive of São Paulo after Aposta Vencedora submitted a bid worth more than double the state’s target price.
Aposta Vencedora made a bid worth R$600m (€95m) for the 15-year contract, seeing off competition from SP Loterias, which was backed by IGT Global. The contract gives it exclusive rights to sell the state’s lottery draws tickets as well as over sports pools and instant lotto games. Products are sold at 31 exclusive lottery sellers and 11,000 independent retailers.
Individual states were allowed to create their own lottery systems through a decision from the Supreme Court in 2020, which ruled that the federal government did not have exclusive control over the vertical. The government of São Paulo hopes to raise R$3.4bn for healthcare investments over the lottery concession period. Bingo, casino and Jogo do Bicho (instant win) games are not included in the contract since these are the subject of federal legislation currently being discussed.
The winning consortium is led by Alexandre Manoel da Silva, who was secretary of public policy assessment, planning, energy and lottery from 2018, in the government of Michel Temer, until 2020, in the government of Jair Bolsonaro. Other figures include the Portuguese gaming executive Fernando Eduardo Cabral Paes de Sousa Afonso and AX4B Computer Systems, led by CEO Antônio Cesar Felix de Sousa.
The state government said São Paulo’s public services register would monitor the concessionaire’s operations to evaluate the quality of its systems and customer support services.
Meanwhile, the Rio de Janeiro state lottery, Loterj, has lodged a lawsuit that seeks to block the new federal gambling regulator SPA’s approval of online gambling operators to continue operating until the launch of a regulated market on January 1.
The regulator had set an October 1 deadline for operators already active on the grey market to apply for licences in order to continue operating. Some 100 operators submitted applications and were added to the approved list. However, Loterj argues that the process was invalid and the operators cannot be considered approved until they have paid the BRL30m (€4.7m licence fee) and gone through a public bidding process overseen by the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
