Are betting operators to blame, or is it Brazil’s economic framework of the last 35 years?

Are betting companies to blame or is it Brazil’s economic framework of the last 35 years?

This is the central question raised by Carlos Akira Sato in his analysis of Brazil’s rising household debt.

Rather than attributing over-indebtedness to sports betting platforms, he argues that the issue is rooted in decades of economic transformation shaped by credit expansion, financialization, and increasingly sophisticated systems of consumer stimulation across multiple sectors.

The debate surrounding Brazilian household debt has gained a new preferred target: sports betting platforms.

The so-called “bets” have taken center stage in the news, political discourse, and regulatory discussions, often associated with rising default rates and financial compulsiveness.

But perhaps the correct question is another one: did the over-indebtedness of Brazilian families really begin with bets?

The answer, under a serious historical analysis, is no.

The phenomenon predates the regulation of sports betting by decades and is linked to a profound economic, cultural, and technological transformation that began in the 1990s, when Brazil gradually abandoned a closed and inflationary economy to enter a modern logic of consumption, credit, and the financialization of everyday life.

The economic opening promoted during the Collor administration changed the country’s consumption patterns.

A few years later, the Real Plan brought monetary stability and transformed the population’s economic psychology itself.

For the first time, millions of Brazilians began financing goods, using credit cards, paying in installments, and incorporating debt as a normal part of economic life.

This process represented progress and financial inclusion.

But it also consolidated a new economic model based on the anticipation of families’ future income. Credit ceased to be an exception and became permanent infrastructure supporting national consumption.

Banks, retailers, and financial institutions quickly understood this change. Large retail chains stopped acting solely as product distributors and became financial platforms.

Private-label cards, sophisticated installment plans, and permanent financing mechanisms became part of consumers’ daily lives. In many cases, financial margins became just as relevant as the sale of the products themselves.

Throughout the 2000s, the model deepened.

The expansion of banking access, electronic payment methods, and fintechs accelerated the financialization of everyday life.

From 2013 onward, with the regulatory opening promoted by Law No. 12,865, mobile phones simultaneously became banks, digital wallets, credit platforms, marketplaces, and permanent environments for behavioral monetization.

Credit became instant, invisible, and integrated into the digital experience. Consumers started obtaining financing in just a few clicks, often within the purchasing flow itself. Brazil definitively entered the era of behavioral hyperstimulation of consumption.

And this is where the contemporary debate begins to reveal an important contradiction.

While the country spent decades building a sophisticated economic architecture based on credit expansion, emotional advertising, gamification, attention capture, and monetization of future income, structural investment in financial education remained insufficient.

Brazil taught its population how to consume before teaching them how to build wealth.

Today, virtually every relevant sector of the economy operates advanced behavioral stimulation mechanisms: digital retail, apps, streaming platforms, delivery services, marketplaces, banks, fintechs, and social networks.

Advertising is no longer merely informative; it has become algorithmic, personalized, and emotional. The modern consumer competes for attention and self-control against systems designed to maximize engagement and continuous consumption.

This phenomenon appears even in sectors rarely associated with regulatory debates.

The food retail industry, for example, uses sophisticated neuromarketing techniques to boost the consumption of ultra-processed foods, alcoholic beverages, and impulse-buy products. Yet few segments have faced a level of monitoring similar to that imposed on sports betting.

Brazil’s regulated betting sector emerged under one of the strictest frameworks in the digital economy.

Platforms are required to biometrically identify users, monitor behavior, track transactions, report suspicious activity to COAF, implement responsible gaming policies, and prevent bets financed through credit.

The Brazilian model requires prior deposits and prohibits “uncovered” betting.

In other words, regulators correctly understood that the combination of compulsiveness and credit could become socially explosive.

But here an inevitable question arises: why have sectors historically associated with the over-indebtedness of Brazilian families operated for decades under significantly lower levels of behavioral monitoring?

Data from CNC show that the percentage of indebted families reached 80.2% in February 2026 — the highest level in the historical series.

This scenario did not begin with bets. It is the result of decades of aggressive credit expansion, financialization of daily life, hyperstimulation of consumption, and the structural absence of economic education for the population.

Comparative framework: regulatory and behavioral obligations

Perhaps the most provocative point is precisely the regulatory asymmetry revealed by this debate.

Several sectors historically associated with compulsiveness, hyperconsumption, and dependency have operated for decades under a less interventionist regulatory logic than the one currently applied to sports betting.

In the end, the real debate may not simply be “how should betting be regulated?”, but rather how to prepare society to live in a digital, hyper-financialized economy permanently driven by attention capture, consumption, and behavioral monetization.

Carlos Akira Sato
Co-Founder of Fenynx Digital Assets and specialist in Regulated Markets, Financial Infrastructure, Governance, and Innovation. Vice President of Institutional Relations at PAGOS (Association for Electronic Payment Management).