Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro avoid betting ban in presidential debate

Neither Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party (PT) nor Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) raised Brazil's online betting ban during their televised debate on 18 October. The debate was the first face-to-face meeting of the second round and took place on Band one, one week before the 25 October runoff.

Household debt featured in the economic portion of the debate, yet neither candidate said anything about the betting ban, despite the government having cited that ban as its chief justification for the measure. Lula likewise steered clear of betting, a topic he dislikes, and instead pressed Flávio over the INSS fraud case, asking about lawyer Willer Tomaz, who is himself under investigation.

The president had signed Provisional Measure No. 1,394/2026 on 25 September, a text that prohibits fixed-odds betting and online casinos. He presented the move as an answer to indebted households, and Finance Minister Dario Durigan described the contest as a “plebiscite on betting”.

The first round gave Flávio 47% against 45% for Lula. O Globo reported that, in the days following that vote, Lula's team calculated that the betting ban had hurt its performance. Lula brought up indebtedness without touching betting in a TV Globo interview on 15 October, then took up the subject again on 16 October in Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, though framed politically: after lunching with Globo's leadership, Flávio drew criticism from Lula, who said the network was “angry” because he “put an end to betting”.

Only hours before the broadcast, the Federal Police sent the Supreme Federal Court (STF) a file on suspected money laundering said to involve the senator and lawyer Willer Tomaz. Investigators say the material indicates that Tomaz in practice runs Rede Loto, which was granted permission by the Rio de Janeiro state lottery (Loterj) in May 2023 to offer sports betting. Tomaz's defence rejected that account, stating that Rede Loto “never operated as a betting platform” and condemning the disclosure as “a leak that was only made hours before the debate”.

Flávio had previously supported sports betting without online casinos, but did not raise the subject during the debate while the investigation was under way. The report said the absence left open issues including some 30,000 websites identified as suspicious after operators' betting licences were withdrawn, the loss of some football clubs' major sponsorships, and the path of the provisional measure in Congress and before the STF.