Over the weekend, my team played – and I, who no longer follows football, ended up stopping for a moment to watch a corner kick. Close in the hit player, I see the sponsorship of a Bet on his shirt. Cuts to the push-pushing in the other team’s area and shirt, another Bet. Cut again, a wide open plane with wide view of the field, I told five more different Bets, at the same time, in the advertising around the lawn. I looked for some brand other than the segment and found only one. Seven by one in the bets game against rapa.
Which teams were on the field? Irrelevant. The impact of Bets, however, no. They are the ball of the time and are swinging structures that go far beyond the stands.
Although there are no evidence that people who bet are getting more straightened, data from the database point out that 42% of gamblers are delinquent, and show that 52% of the total number of gamblers is made up of people with monthly family income of up to 2 minimum wages.
Who has less is precisely who is playing and losing – and that is cruel.
Despite recent regulation, the impact is giant and tends to grow. According to Kantar Ibope Media, the segment is the one that increased its investments in advertising, growing impressive 47%. In a market established such as the United Kingdom, 20% of revenue is invested in advertising, while here, we are close to or above 50%.
As the regulated game is recent, the strategy makes sense to business, which seek to establish themselves. However, we may be normalizing behavior with increasing negative impact, which WHO calls impulse behavior disorder and already affects 2 million people in Brazil. It makes sense?
The more used to playing, the more indebted people can stay. And I don’t see financial education gaining the same relevance as bets. Just as you need to drink in moderation, it is said that you need to play responsibly. But say that phrase is enough, or is it a mechanism for exemption from guilt? “I warned.” I know …
The impact is large and wide. Bolsa Familia beneficiaries spent 3 Bi on online betting homes in August 2024. The government had to discuss the restriction of access so that these people could not compromise their small budget even more to games. Retail no longer earned more than 100 billion last year because of Bets, according to CNC, that is, people are consuming less what they need to spend and lose where they should not.
In my opinion, when it is not right, it tends to get more and more wrong. When you have around the field a billionaire business as an advertiser, and on the field the object of the game itself, it gets complicated. It was not long before we see the new cases of sales of results involving football professionals. Although the investment today is practically playing teams and championships, in the medium term has a potential bad image effect for a sport – which is no longer at its best time.
Amid the regularization of BETS, in October 2024 a animal game home was even authorized amid hundreds of companies. It is hard to believe that we are establishing the most entire and correct criteria so that bets can be authorized without risk to society.
Meanwhile, advertising grows and invoices, but has difficulty doing your work straight, because the differentiation between one and the other is practically zero. One has a celebrity, another has others, but in the end and at first it is all the same.
By justifying themselves for what they can earn, everyone is overlooking what we have to lose. Maybe it’s not as obvious as that 7-1 day, but I think we’re losing, and a lot.
