The mafia-run animal lottery in Brazil was invincible. Online gaming changed that.

Taiza Karen da Costa got her first taste of gambling when she was just nine years old.

Ms. Costa grew up on the rundown fringes of Rio de Janeiro, and her godparents would send her into the neighborhood, a few coins in hand, to bet on a popular lottery that, while illegal, has been a staple of life in Brazil for more than a year. century.

The habit stuck, and as an adult, she would bet daily on the game, where players bet on animals represented by sets of numbers. Like many Brazilians, whenever she dreams of a creature, she sees it as a sign to bet on the lottery, known as “jogo do bicho” – or animal game – in Portuguese.

“If I dream, I bet,” said Ms. Costa, 37, a clothing saleswoman.

But recently, Ms. Costa has turned to a different game of chance that is at her fingertips around the clock: a digital slot machine that offers big rewards if you can draw three identical symbols.

Tigrinho, or Little Tiger in Portuguese, mimics the popular Chinese slot machine game and has led the way with the growing popularity of mobile betting apps since Brazil legalized digital gambling in 2018. Ms. Costa plays Little Tiger every day and gambles — and loses. – I picked up as a result. She estimates she lost nearly $80,000 over two years because of the app.

“It’s hard to stop,” she said.

Online betting games, from digital casinos to bets on soccer, have sparked a fever in Latin America’s largest country, sparking intense debate – as elsewhere in the world – over how to regulate the booming industry and protect low-income people who often… They accumulate debt. Or lose large portions of bets with small profits.

The gambling craze also threatens Brazil’s animal lottery, which has already happened Links to deadly mobs It has been an unshakable part of popular culture since its creation in Rio de Janeiro in the 19th century and its spread throughout the country.

While decades of crackdowns have failed to eradicate the lottery and the criminal gangs that run it, the analogue game now appears to be in the throes of an existential crisis as fewer Brazilians are willing to actually bet with a local bookmaker.

Digital alternatives — which offer jackpots and endless odds — attract more than $23 billion in bets each year, about ten times the animal lottery, according to the Legal Gaming Institute, a nonprofit that studies gambling in Brazil.

While the analogue game has six draws per day, online gambling does not stop.

“The Brazilian gambler now has a casino in his pocket,” said Magno José Santos de Souza, president of the institute.

On the other hand, the animal lottery “has not been able to replenish its base,” said Luiz Antonio Simas, a Rio historian who wrote a book about the game.

The game was created in the 1890s by a baron who was seeking to attract more visitors to his newly established zoo in Rio’s Villa Isabel neighborhood. People with entry tickets were entered into a drawing, with an animal drawn at the end of each day.

The lottery soon became more popular than the zoo itself, and similar games of chance began to appear throughout the city. Fearing that the game would harm the government lottery, the authorities banned it three years after its creation.

But the lottery’s progress was unstoppable. It wasn’t long before bookmakers betting outside bars and newsstands became a fixture across Brazil, with the game reaching even the remotest corners of the Amazon rainforest.

By the 1970s, the animal lottery had grown into a multimillion-dollar business, fueling bloody feuds among Rio’s mafia as they struggled for control of territory. Eventually, the gambling kingpins divided the city—and the country—into districts.

To protect their illicit dealings, lottery bosses bribed judges, politicians, and police officials. In Rio’s working-class areas, they won hearts and minds by buying up local soccer teams, financing lavish carnival parades and handing out Christmas presents.

“They built this fun and interesting facade,” said Fabio Correa, a federal prosecutor in Rio de Janeiro who leads an organized crime task force. “They wanted to create this image of good Samaritans.”

Over the years, the authorities repeatedly tried to crack down on mafia-run lotteries, and in 1993, they finally made a breakthrough: a judge sentenced 14 lottery leaders to six years in prison. However, it wasn’t long before many of the game’s most powerful bosses were out, free to expand their empires.

On a recent afternoon in the Villa Isabel neighborhood, birthplace of the animal lottery, three bookies — each in a different corner — took bets from regulars. A few of them looked younger than 50.

Germano da Silva (71 years old), a retired media personality, said: “I always bet on the pig or the tiger.” He dug into his wallet, pulling out an old ticket that had won him $450 the week before. “My children don’t know how to play,” he added. “Whenever they want to bet, they come to me.”

For newcomers, the lottery rules may seem daunting. Players bet on combinations of two, three or four numbers, which are associated with any of 25 animals, from a cow to a monkey. Bets start at a few cents, but winnings can reach thousands of dollars.

However, most animal lottery players don’t gamble in hopes of getting rich, according to historian Mr. Simas. “They want to make a little money for beer at the end of the day,” he said. “Playing the game is part of street culture.”

In Brazil, a highly superstitious country, bets in animal lotteries have long been derived from dreams, lucky animals, or dates of major life events such as birthdays, deaths, or marriages.

“Everyone has their favorite toy,” said Nina Coelho, a 60-year-old secretary, who was betting on the dog, inspired by a stray dog ​​that followed her friend home.

While most gambling, including casinos and slot machines, is banned in Brazil, lawmakers have legalized digital gaming but delayed drafting concrete monitoring rules. Experts say this delay has opened the door for thousands of unregulated platforms, some of them fraudulent, to flood Brazil.

This mirrors the experiences of countries such as Britain and the United States, where lawmakers, eager to capture tax revenue, rushed to legalize digital gambling, but were later left scrambling to impose regulations, said Leah Neuer, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers. university.

“Most lawmakers have no real awareness that this can be addictive,” Ms. Neuer said.

Digital games were an immediate success in Brazil, a country with a population of 203 million and one of the highest rates of Internet usage in the world. Platforms promising a fast path out of poverty quickly gained popularity among low-income people in a country marked by deep inequality.

The colorful and childish apps are often promoted by social media influencers who tell their followers that they can win tens of thousands in cash on sites that turn out to be fraudulent. (some They were later arrestedaccused of tricking fans into betting on unauthorized platforms.)

The Brazilian government estimates that nearly a quarter of the population started gambling online within the past five years. Brazilians now spend about $3.5 billion a month on online bets, and sports betting makes up a large segment in soccer-mad Brazil, according to figures from the country’s central bank.

In an attempt to control the sector, Brazilian authorities began implementing a new law this month that requires betting companies to pay fees and comply with federal rules on fraud, responsible marketing and money laundering.

Animal lotteries are still illegal, but the shift to digital betting has opened up new sources of revenue.

Authorities say lottery bosses are using legal betting sites to launder money raised from illicit activities such as animal lotteries.

“They are infiltrating the digital space,” Mr. Correa said. “They want to give an air of legitimacy to activities that are ultimately illegal to begin with.”

But even with so many out of the animal lottery, there are still those who aren’t quite ready to give it up.

Matthews Resende, 30, remembers his father teaching him how to calculate odds and make literal bets. “It’s the Google animal lottery,” said Mr. Resende, a drinks distributor from Rio.

These days, Mr. Resende is one of millions of Brazilians who bet digitally on soccer matches. However, he loves the animal lottery, and stops by his local bookie every week as well.

He says he knows the game’s criminal connections, but is still sad to see it go away.

“It’s a family tradition,” he added. “So there’s a kind of nostalgia there.”