Aligning the Dice Between Past Trials and Future Goals: The Complexities and Idiosyncrasies Involving Current Commercial Gambling Regulation in Brazil

Abstract

AbstractBrazil’s approach to commercial gambling has always been unique and contrary to the traditional cycle of gambling regulation, that departs from illegality towards legalisation in adjusting the appropriate form of regulation until normalisation. The justification of the current prohibition does not lie only in the formal reasoning from its criminal laws from the 1940s in terms of religiousness, social rejection and culture. It is also a result of the post and far-reaching effects of the traumatic and chaotic regulation of bingo, legalised for a short period at the beginning of the 1990s and banned again at the beginning of the 2000s. Since then, commercial operators have been creative in finding loopholes in the laws and tireless in advocating for proper and general legalisation for the sector, but until now none of them has been sufficiently successful. In order to address what is commercial gambling in Brazil, this article departs from the very distinguished scenario under which the Brazilian gambling industry has flourished—and still does, behind the scenes—to critically analyse the main trends in terms of perspectives ahead. Far from having premonitory views about the future but refusing to roll the dice to access what is about to come next, this study focuses on giving a proper understanding of what is commercial gambling in Brazil and why its background is a sine qua non condition to properly comprehend its present and evolving state.