Brazil: Caixa Loterias to launch new products to tackle gambling market

The information was given at a public hearing in the Chamber of Deputies; MPs call for measures to strengthen lottery agents. This includes the return of the instant lottery (raspadinha), discontinued in 2015, and fixed odds bets, to be operated by lottery agents.

Lucíola took part in a public hearing at the Financial Supervision and Control Commission to talk about the company. Caixa Loterias was created in 2016 as a subsidiary of Caixa. Last April, the entity's board of directors approved the migration of all lotteries to the new company.

According to the management company, the creation of the subsidiary allows it to better focus on the business, which has been going through changes in recent years, with the emergence of virtual games and the decision of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in 2020, which broke the Union's monopoly to operate lotteries. The move opened up space for states to create their own lotteries.

‘We have to understand that lotteries are a different activity to banking,’ said the subsidiary's executive. ‘So what we have done is to take it from a “small area” within a vice-presidency of la Caixa, to an exclusive company for this, with an exclusive structure, with an exclusive focus,’ she said.

Situation of lottery operators

Lucíola said the new products should improve the business environment for the 13,300 lottery agencies that sell la Caixa games. Currently, according to reports from MPs at the hearing, lottery operators are living with low financial returns.
MP Darci de Matos (PSD-SC) claimed that lottery sellers are ‘cornered’, with revenues dwindling due to competition from virtual gambling, including Caixa itself. He advocated that lottery retailers should be allowed to set up their own websites to market their products.

Privatisation

Deputy Tadeu Veneri (PT-PR), who requested the public hearing, expressed concern about the loss of state control of Caixa Loterias. He recalled that the Supreme Court ruled that subsidiaries of state-owned companies can be privatised without congressional authorisation.

According to Veneri, a possible privatisation would jeopardise the social programmes that receive funds from the lotteries. “This worries us a lot, because we know that today the lottery is one of the main funders of the government's social programmes,” he said.

In 2023, the Caixa lotteries raised R$23.4 billion. Of this amount, R$9.2 billion (39.2% of the total) went to federal government programmes in the areas of social security, sport, culture, public safety, education and health.

Lucíola affirmed that there is no foreseeable loss of state control and that the management of the lottery network remains within the Caixa Econômica Federal.