Vote on Brazil casino bill put back to 2025

The Senate has postponed a vote on long-delayed legislation that would allow land-based casinos in Brazil.

Brazil.- The proposed legalisation and regulation of land-based casinos in Brazil has been hit by another delay. The Brazilian Senate has postponed a vote on the legislation, putting it back to the new year. 

Senator Flávio Arns proposed that the vote be suspended and that the bill’s “urgent” status be modified, a move that was backed by 33 Senators. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health has been asked to evaluate the bill’s potential impact on Brazil’s United Health System (SUS) and Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS). 

Bill No. 2,234/2022 would permit land-based casinos, horseracing, betting, bingo and jogo do bicho (instant win) sales, lifting then-president Gaspar Dutra’s 1946 decree banning casinos from Brazil’s municipalities and districts.

The bill has faced years of delays and failed to advance last year, but it was resurrected by senator Irajá Abreu (PSD-TO), who has insisted that lawmakers cannot ignore reforms that could generate “about 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs in the country”. The issue is separate from last year’s legalisation of online gambling. Brazil’s regulated online gambling market is to launch on January, but it too has faced last-minute challenges.

The new gambling regulator, the SPA, has begun advising operators that have been approved to operate, granting them 30 days to complete the final requirements, which include paying the licence fee of R$30m (€5m). The complete list of operators approved for the launch of the regulated online gambling market will be announced by the end of the month. 

However, the Supreme Court is to rule on a legal challenge that questions the constitutionality of the framework. The trade union CNC has challenged the legalisation of online gambling. 

For now, the Supreme Court has ordered changes to address recent concerns about customers gambling using welfare funds. The court has ordered that articles be amended to ban the use of social benefits for gambling and to prohibit the advertising of gambling to under 18s in sports sponsorships and media platforms. 

In other recent changes, the Ministry of Finance has published a new ordinance on the transfer of gambling data. Ordinance No. 1,857 regulates the transfer of data and customer funds between legal entities in the same economic group and prohibits such transfers in some cases.

Article 3 states that player data and funds can only be transferred to financial institutions with an authorisation issued by the SPA. Prospective operators have until December 13 to apply for this authorisation if they wish to operate on the market from the January 1 launch date. The deadline can be extended in the event that the SPA requires additional information.