Vinicius Pinho warns of credibility risks in Brazil's betting market
Brazil’s betting market has finally entered the regulatory era, but the feeling within the industry itself is that many of today’s problems emerged before the rules were in place.
After years operating in a “legal limbo”, betting operators expanded rapidly in Brazil long before enforcement structures were established. The result was accelerated growth, highly profitable operations, and a market that became difficult to control. Today, the country is already considered one of the world’s most valuable online betting markets, but also one of the most politically sensitive.
The figures help explain the scale of this transformation
In 2025 alone, the first year of operation under the new federal regulatory framework, companies operating under regulation generated BRL37 billion ($6.5 billion) in gross gaming revenue (GGR), according to data from the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting of the Ministry of Finance (SPA). The government also reported that 25.2 million Brazilians placed bets during the year and that more than 25,000 illegal websites were blocked during the period.
At the same time, more than 217,000 people requested voluntary self-exclusion from platforms within just 40 days of the national account blocking system being in operation, with “loss of control over gambling” cited as the main reason by users.
The sector’s growth brought billions in tax revenue, record football sponsorships and a flood of advertising investment. But it also intensified a debate that has become much stronger in recent months: did the market grow before building real consumer protection mechanisms?
For Vinicius Pinho, founder and CEO of ABCBET (Brazilian Association for Compliance, Best Practices, Ethics and Transparency in Betting), this imbalance began even before regulation. “When you spend too long without regulation, the illegal market grows at an absurd geometric progression,” he said during an exclusive interview with SiGMA News.
The statement reflects a perception now shared even by parts of the industry itself: Brazil took so long to regulate betting that the illegal market gained scale, relevance and influence before the rules even arrived.
Although sports betting was legalised in 2018, practical regulation took years to materialise. During that period, hundreds of platforms operated freely in the country, many without a physical presence in Brazil, without clear financial controls and without any consumer protection policies. When the government finally began effective enforcement in 2025, the market was already enormous.
Today, the SPA monitors dozens of authorised operators while attempting to combat a parallel market that remains highly active. In addition to blocking websites, the government has also started shutting down bank accounts linked to irregular operations, as well as removing illegal advertising from social media.
The issue is no longer solely economic. It has also become a debate about mental health, financial education and advertising responsibility.
Advertising has become one of the biggest challenges in Brazil’s betting market
Over the past two years, betting brands have dominated Brazilian football. Every Série A club displayed betting sponsors on their kits in 2025. Companies in the sector invested around BRL1.4 billion ($245 million) in media during the same period, including television, streaming, radio and digital platforms.
The advertising surge helped accelerate platform growth, but it also started to concern authorities, some specialists, and part of the public opinion. The main criticism is that the sector created extremely aggressive campaigns before consolidating a strong responsible gambling culture. According to Vinicius, this was one of the biggest mistakes in the early stage of regulation.
“The regulated market did not use the first months of regulation to intensively promote responsible gambling advertising,” he said.
The concern is not only about the quantity of advertisements, but mainly about how betting was presented to Brazilian consumers. For years, part of the advertising created by influencers associated betting with financial independence, luxury, quick money and life transformation. In many cases, the communication resembled an investment opportunity far more than entertainment.
For specialists in digital behaviour and financial health, this helped create a dangerous perception, especially among young adults and financially vulnerable individuals.
During the interview, Vinicius also highlighted another sensitive issue: the low level of financial education among the Brazilian population. According to him, consumers unfamiliar with betting are more susceptible to emotional triggers, aggressive campaigns, and false profit expectations. “The path must always be entertainment and never turning betting into a solution for debt,” he stated.
These concerns intensified particularly after the creation of the Bets CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry), established to investigate the impact of online betting on Brazilian household budgets, possible links to money laundering and the role of influencers in promoting platforms.
Compliance has become a central debate in Brazil’s betting market
With regulation, terms such as compliance, integrity and responsible gambling began appearing in virtually every institutional campaign by betting companies. However, within the industry itself there are concerns that part of this discourse may not reflect the expected intentions. Vinicius criticises precisely this positioning. According to him, many companies started using compliance more as a marketing strategy than as genuine internal structural transformation.
“You talk a lot about something you are supposedly doing and, when you look at it in practice, it is very fragile.”
The criticism ranges from generic policies copied from other markets to internal programmes created solely to comply with regulatory requirements. In his view, there is a major difference between “being in compliance” and “being compliance.”
The Brazilian market remains in an early stage of regulatory maturity. Many companies entered the country rapidly, driven by Brazil’s financial potential, but are still structuring anti-money laundering departments, compulsive behaviour monitoring systems and advertising controls.
The government itself has already intensified enforcement. In 2025, the SPA opened more than 130 administrative proceedings involving betting companies and expanded actions against illegal advertising on social media, including the removal of influencer profiles and irregular sponsored content.
Brazil’s betting market is expected to undergo consolidation
Despite the high number of platforms currently operating, the trend within the market is toward consolidation. Brazil currently has hundreds of active brands between regulated companies and parallel operations, but Vinicius believes many will not survive rising regulatory costs.
In addition to the BRL30 million ($6.1 million) licence, operators must invest in technology, compliance, legal teams, financial monitoring and constant adaptation to new SPA requirements. “Those without solid compliance programmes will not remain in the market,” Vinicius stated.
The expectation is that large international groups will eventually dominate the Brazilian market in the coming years, repeating a pattern already seen in other countries that went through similar regulatory processes.
Even so, the sector remains optimistic about Brazil’s potential. The country offers virtually everything the industry seeks: a huge connected population, strong sports culture, high digital engagement and significant online consumer capacity. But sustainable market growth will increasingly depend on credibility.
This may be the main challenge for betting operators in Brazil going forward: convincing consumers, authorities and public opinion that the sector can grow without repeating the mistakes that turned other global markets into targets of political crisis and social backlash.
This article was originally published in Portuguese on 15 May.
