Brazil's National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) has submitted a report to the government disputing claims by the National Trade Confederation (CNC) that betting drives household debt.
The central objection is methodological. CNC compared periods before and after January 2023 and described the exercise as difference-in-differences analysis, but used no control group. Without one, there is no way to isolate what would have happened to debt levels in the absence of betting growth. Interest rates, inflation, credit policy, employment and social transfers could all account for the observed pattern. The sample — 59 monthly observations — is large enough to record a time correlation but not to establish causation.
Experts at Veja magazine also found inconsistencies in CNC's tables: a coefficient of −0.305 with a standard error of 0.348 was marked with three asterisks, indicating significance at the 1% level. The figures do not support that.
But ANJL's report has limits of its own. It does not recalculate estimates, offer alternative data or conduct its own analysis of betting's impact on household budgets. Some significance markers are reproduced without verification. The authors acknowledge they did not audit CNC's data and did not attach code or an econometric replication.
The report then shifts to conclusions that do not follow from the critique: it defends advertising as a tool to steer players toward legal platforms and argues that strict restrictions will strengthen the black market. Those claims rest solely on industry-commissioned research.
ANJL identified a real flaw in CNC's methodology, but tries to extract too much from it. The report undermines the claim that betting's effect on debt has been proven. It does not prove there is no effect.
