The decision to reinforce Loterias CAIXA was taken by the bank's Board of Directors this past week. The subsidiary's CEO, Lucíola Vasconcelos, said that the scratch card will return in style and revamped, with new prize bands. Announcement details are being finalized.
“There is great expectation surrounding the scratch card, one of the most popular bets in the world,” said Vasconcelos.
It will be possible to scratch the ticket manually in lotteries, as in the past, and also virtually, using a cell phone tool, which simulates a finger scraping the surface.
According to technicians familiar with the discussions, as published in O Globo, the ticket will cost between R$2.50 and R$20. The prize will be proportional to the cost of the bet and will vary between R$2.50 and R$2 million. According to legislation, prizes above R$2,259 can only be redeemed at Caixa branches.
From tic-tac-toe to football
The ticket is still being designed and will contain various themes, such as tic-tac-toe, extra chances, commemorative dates, board games and football games, in vibrant colors. Caixa is considering holding an event to relaunch the lottery, which will be sold in the network of 13,300 lottery outlets across the country.
The second step will be the entry of Loterias CAIXA into the sports betting market, dominated by international companies and which has begun to be regulated in the country. Caixa's strategy is to adopt the current model in Portugal and allow, in addition to online betting, bettors to risk their guesses at fixed points, in lottery outlets.
According to Vasconcelos, scratch cards and bets are the most popular in the world, accounting for 48% of revenue from games. For the director of Loterias CAIXA, there is enormous potential in these two niches, considering the low participation of games in the Brazilian Gross Domestic Product (GDP), of just 0.21%.
With a population of 215 million, Brazil earns R$18 billion (US$ 3.45bn) a year from games, according to Caixa research. With around 10 million inhabitants, Portugal earns the same amount from betting, which accounts for 1.17% of GDP, highlighted Lucíola. In Uruguay, the percentage is 0.39%, 0.46% in Argentina and 0.96% in Spain.
According to research by the bank, bets move between R$40 billion (US$ 7.7bn) and R$70 (US$ 13.45bn) billion in the country. Lucíola highlights that gambling in Brazil has a relevant social function, as 48% of the amount raised is directed to social policies, such as culture, sports and public safety.
Up to 80 million tickets
With the frustrated attempts of the governments of former presidents Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro to sell Lotex (instant lottery, the formal name of the scratch card), Caixa spent eight years out of the modality and failed to raise R$8 billion during this period. Between 70 million and 80 million tickets were sold per year.
Caixa sold scratch cards between the 1960s and 2015, when the betting model was suspended by order of the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), which challenged the legality of the way it was being done in the country.
In 2018, legal changes allowed the service to be transferred to the private sector and resumed. After holding two auctions that did not attract interested parties and relaxing its initial demands, the federal government managed to transfer the right to operate the service for 15 years to a consortium.
However, the company withdrew after considering that the service would only be viable if it signed a distribution contract with Caixa, which never happened. Logistics are important because the ticket can only be validated at the point of sale, to avoid the use of scratch cards obtained from the theft of a distribution truck, for example.
In August last year, a presidential decree changed the legislation again in order to allow the Ministry of Finance to authorize Caixa to resume the service.
More collection
In 2023, Caixa raised R$23.4 billion (US$ 4.5bn) from lotteries. With the return of the scratch card, Caixa estimates an increase of at least 20% in lottery revenue.
A wing of the PT, however, is against the creation of the subsidiary and the direction of all lotteries to the company, which is 100% state-owned. The argument is that this arm of Caixa will be ready to be privatized by other governments.
Source: O Globo
