The recent diffusion of the lottery market and the circuits of urban economy: official lotteries, jogo do bicho and sports betting in the state of Alagoas

• Grant number: 21/09059-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2022
• End date: March 23, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Fabio Betioli Contel
• Grantee: Leonardo Sena Do Carmo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/06297-0 - Territory, finance and rules: a georaphical perspective on the pratice of gambling and betting in Brazil and Spain, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

The offer of lottery services as an initiative to promote competitions for the benefit of public coffers has been a practice in Europe since the 15th century. In Brazil, the first lottery was practiced in 1784, in Vila Rica (currently Ouro Preto - MG), and since then, the amount of lottery products has become numerous. This work aims to analyze three main types of gambling in the Brazilian territory: 1. official lotteries; 2. jogo do bicho; and 3. sports betting (physical and online), seeking to understand its importance in the dynamics of urban economies in the cities of Alagoas, based on five main processes: 1. Its historical development; 2. The evolution of technical systems and rules that govern lottery activities in the country; 3. The parallels and contrasts in the functioning of official and illegal activities; 4. The degree of capitalization of the different agents; and 5. The strategies for locating these lottery services in the Alagoan urban space. To achieve this goal, we will take as our main reference framework the theory of the two circuits of the urban economy (SANTOS, [1975] 2008; SILVEIRA, 2004; 2016; 2017), which enables a geographical interpretation of the processes highlighted above. As a more specific empirical cut of the research, we will analyze the Immediate Geographic Region of Arapiraca (AL), to investigate the official lotteries (CEF, Alagoas dá Sorte and Arapiraca de Prêmios), the jogo do bicho firms (A $orte, Casa da Fortuna, Portas da Sorte) and the firms that provide sports betting. Therefore, we will also seek to understand the extraterritorial dimension of online betting firms, which are companies whose administrative headquarters are in foreign countries, but which are widely held in Brazilian cities.