Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva banned online gambling and unveiled a debt cancellation program for low-income households in the final week before an October 4 election where he is statistically tied with Flavio Bolsonaro. The moves arrived together on September 26, seven days before the first round, and they frame the incumbent’s closing argument: the state will shield working-class finances from both predatory lending and the betting boom it legalized six years ago.
The gambling ban takes effect
A provisional executive order halted new customer deposits immediately and gave betting platforms until October 6 to go offline, shutting a regulated market that had operated for less than two years. Lula described the industry to journalists in São Paulo as a tumour that would kill the patient if not removed. The source of the urgency is visible in the numbers: Agência Publica reported that 68 billion dollars flowed through the Pix payments system into gambling in 2025, the first full year of legal fixed-odds sports betting, and roughly 12 billion dollars of that was lost, equivalent to 0.68 percent of gross national disposable income for Brazilian families. Many of those families sit in the poor and working-class cohorts that form Lula’s core constituency.
The debt relief outline
At the same event Lula announced a multi-billion dollar program under which the government would purchase defaulted consumer debts of up to 10,000 reais per borrower. The Naked Capitalism headline that carried the story put the total at 28 billion dollars, though the article text broke off before confirming the figure. The measure joins a last-minute suite of pocketbook policies that includes a Bolsa Família increase and fuel-cost reductions, steps opponents have labeled vote-buying.
The legislative hurdle
The gambling ban expires in 120 days unless Congress ratifies it, a prospect that requires Lula to win the presidency and his Workers’ Party to hold or build majorities in both chambers. Polls show a dead heat with Bolsonaro, making that legislative path uncertain. If the order lapses, the betting market could reopen; if it holds, Brazil becomes the rare major economy to reverse a gambling liberalization after less than two years.
What the polls show
Most surveys have the candidates in a statistical tie, meaning the first round on October 4 could easily force a runoff. The policy blitz suggests the palace views the race as winnable only if the economic anxiety driving the gambling debt crisis is met with visible, immediate relief, whether or not the measures survive the calendar.