The animal lottery run by the Brazilian mafia was unbeatable. Online games have changed that.

Taiza Carine da Costa got her first taste of gambling when she was only 9 years old.

Growing up on the seedy fringes of Rio de Janeiro, Ms. Costa’s godfathers would send her down the street, a few coins in hand, to bet on the popular lottery that, though illegal, has been a staple of life in Brazil for more than a while. century.

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

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

But lately, Ms. Costa has been turning to a different game of chance that is at her fingertips 24 hours a day: a digital slot machine that offers big prizes if she manages to draw three of the same symbols.

Tigrinho, or Little Tiger in Portuguese, mimics the popular Chinese slot and front game while mobile betting apps have exploded in popularity since Brazil legalized digital gambling in 2018. Ms. Costa plays Little Tiger every day, and her gambling — and her losses — picked up as a result. She estimates that she lost approximately $80,000 during the two years of using the app.

“It’s hard to stop,” she said.

Online betting games, from digital casinos to soccer bets, have sparked a fever pitch in Latin America’s largest nation, fueling a heated debate — as elsewhere in the world — about how to regulate the booming industry and protect lower-income people who often pile up in debt or lose out large portions of meager earnings on betting.

The gambling frenzy also threatens Brazil’s animal lottery, which has ties to murderous mafias and has been a steadfast part of popular culture since it originated in Rio de Janeiro in the 1800s and took off across the country.

While decades of crackdowns have failed to stamp out the lottery and the criminal gangs that run it, the analog game now appears to be in the throes of an existential crisis as fewer Brazilians are willing to physically bet at a local bookie.

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

While the analog game has six draws per day, online gambling is non-stop.

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

The animal lottery, on the other hand, “failed to rebuild its base,” said Luiz Antônio Simas, a Rio-based historian who wrote a book about the game.

The game was created in the 1890s by a baron who wanted to attract more visitors to his newly opened zoo in the Vila Isabel district of Rio. People with tickets participated in a raffle, and at the end of each day one animal was drawn.

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 could harm state lotteries, the authorities banned it three years after it was created.

But the progress of the lottery was unstoppable. Soon, bookies taking bets outside bars and newsstands became a fixture across Brazil, and the game reached even the most remote corners of the Amazon rainforest.

By the 1970s, the animal lottery had grown into a multimillion-dollar business that fueled bloody feuds among Rio’s mobs as they fought for territorial control. Gambling bosses eventually divided the city – and the country – into zones.

To protect their illegal business, lottery kingpins bribed judges, politicians and police officers. In the working-class areas of Rio, they won hearts and minds by buying local soccer teams, financing lavish carnival parades and handing out Christmas gifts.

“They built this playful, fun facade,” said Fábio Corrêa, a federal prosecutor in Rio de Janeiro who heads a task force to fight organized crime. “They wanted to create an image of a good Samaritan.”

Over the years, the authorities have repeatedly tried to crack down on the mafia lottery, and in 1993 they finally succeeded: a judge sentenced 14 lottery bosses to six years in prison. But soon many of the game’s most powerful kings were out, free to expand their empires.

On a recent afternoon in the Vila Isabel district, birthplace of the animal lottery, three bookies – each in a different corner – were taking bets from regular customers. Few of them looked younger than 50 years old.

“I always bet on the pig or the tiger,” said Germano da Silva, 71, a retired publicist. Digging through his wallet, he pulled out an old ticket that had earned him $450 a week earlier. “My children don’t know how to play,” he added. “Whenever they want to bet, they come to me.”

For newcomers, lottery rules can seem intimidating. Players bet on combinations of two-, three- or four-digit numbers, which are associated with any of 25 animals, from cows to monkeys. Bets start with a few cents, but payouts can reach thousands of dollars.

However, most animal lottery players do not bet with the hope of getting rich, says Mr. Simas, historian. “They want to win a little beer money at the end of the day,” he said. “Playing the game is part of street culture.”

In Brazil, a deeply superstitious country, animal lottery bets have long been drawn from dreams, lucky animals or dates of major life events such as birthdays, deaths or weddings.

“Every person has their favorite game,” said Nena Coelho, a 60-year-old secretary who bet on the dog, inspired by the stray that followed her friend home.

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

This mirrors the experiences of countries like Britain and the United States, where lawmakers, eager to raise tax revenue, quickly legalized digital gambling but later stalled in the race to impose regulations, said Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers. University.

“Most legislators have no real awareness that this is potentially addictive,” Ms. Nower said.

Digital games have become a hit in Brazil, a country of 203 million with one of the world’s highest internet usage rates. Platforms that promise a quick exit from poverty have quickly gained popularity among low-income people in a country marked by deep inequality.

Colorful and childish, the apps were often promoted by social media influencers who told followers they could win tens of thousands in cash on sites that turned out to be rigged. (Some they were later arrestedaccused of tricking fans into betting on unauthorized platforms.)

The Brazilian government estimates that almost a quarter of the population has started gambling online in the last five years. Brazilians now spend about $3.5 billion each month on online betting, with sports betting making up a huge segment in soccer-crazed Brazil, according to the country’s central bank.

Rushing to bring the sector under control, Brazilian authorities this month began implementing a new law requiring betting firms to pay fees and comply with federal rules on fraud, responsible marketing and money laundering.

Animal lotteries are still illegal, but the move to digital betting has opened up new revenue streams.

Lottery bosses are using legal betting sites to launder money gained from illegal activities like the animal lottery, authorities say.

“They are infiltrating the digital space,” Corrêa said. “They want to give an air of legitimacy to activities that are, at the end of the day, illegal in origin.”

But even though many give up on the animal lottery, there are still those who are not quite ready to give up.

Matheus Resende, 30, remembers how his father taught him to calculate odds and bet. “He’s the Google of lotteries for animals,” said Mr. Resende, beverage 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 also stops by his local bookie every week.

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

“It’s a family tradition,” he said. “So there’s a certain nostalgia there.”