Zona de Azar Brasil – The CEO of Caixa Loterias: “Lotteries Should Launch New Products”

Brazil.- June 5, 2024 www.zonadeazar.com  The CEO of Caixa Loterias, Lucíola Aor Vasconcelos, said this Tuesday (4), in the Chamber of Deputies, that the company is studying the launch of new products to face competition in the Brazilian gaming market.

This includes the return of the instant lottery (scratch card), discontinued in 2015, and fixed-odd bets (‘bets’), which must be operated by lottery agents.

Lucíola participated in a public hearing at the Financial Inspection and Control Commission to talk about the company. Caixa Loterias was created in 2016 as a subsidiary of Caixa.

Last April, the bank’s board of directors approved the migration of all lotteries to the new company.

According to the director, the creation of the subsidiary allows her to better focus on the business, which has been undergoing changes in recent years, with the emergence of virtual games and the decision of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), in 2020, which broke the monopoly of Union to explore lotteries. The measure opened space for states to create their own draws.

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

Lottery situation

Lucíola stated that the new products should improve the business environment of the 13,300 lottery agencies that sell Caixa games. Today, according to reports from deputies who participated in the hearing, lottery operators live with low financial returns.

Caixa Loterias should launch new products to face the gaming market, says director

Deputy Darci de Matos (PSD-SC) said that lottery operators are “trapped”, with increasingly smaller profits due to competition from virtual betting, including from Caixa itself. He defended that lottery companies be authorized to create their own websites to sell their products.

“If we stay only in the physical environment, we will die,” said Mattos. Deputy Reimont (PT-RJ) also called for measures to strengthen lottery agents. The Caixa Loterias executive stated that a product that benefits lotteries, Bolão Caixa, is already in operation. It allows virtual group bets organized by lotteries.

Privatization

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 STF decided that subsidiaries of state-owned companies can be privatized without authorization from the National Congress.

According to Veneri, a possible privatization would put at risk social programs that receive resources from lotteries. “This worries us a lot, because we know that today the lottery is one of the main financiers of government social programs,” said the deputy.

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

Lucíola informed that there is no forecast of loss of state control and that the management of the lottery network continues within Caixa Econômica Federal. Source

Edit @_fonta   www.zonadeazar.com