ABC-BET: Brazil gambling ban strengthens black market
The Brazilian Association for Compliance, Good Practices, Ethics, and Transparency in Betting (ABC-BET) has taken a firm stance against recent statements by President Lula Da Silva. Faced with the possibility of a total ban on the activity just one year after its regulation, the entity emphasizes that any debate on problem gambling must be conducted under a strict commitment to regulatory truth and institutional responsibility, avoiding improvised solutions that could dismantle the progress made in supervision.
The fixed-odds betting market in Brazil was structured to operate under the direct control of the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting of the Ministry of Finance (SPA/MF), with full implementation beginning in January 2025. According to ABC-BET, current legislation is clear in establishing that only duly authorized platforms can operate in the country, which allows for health and financial control that completely disappears in clandestinity. It is essential not to confuse operators who comply with the law with those structures that deliberately operate outside the system, affecting consumer integrity.
Official data supports the intense inspection activity that has recently been carried out. Between October 2024 and December 2025, the SPA/MF and Anatel managed to block more than 25,000 illegal URLs, in addition to initiating hundreds of administrative and inspection processes against digital influencers who promoted irregular offers. For the association, this effort is valuable but insufficient if the financiers and facilitators of the support networks for these criminal operations are not also pursued through civil and criminal liabilities.
Legal uncertainty has become one of the biggest obstacles to the consolidation of the sector. The market has faced constant changes in requirements and restrictive legislative proposals, such as Bill No. 5,582/2025 or the Anti-Faction Law. This proposal aimed to impose an additional 15% contribution on bets, which would have drastically increased the tax burden, reducing the competitiveness of legal companies and pushing users towards the unsupervised environment. Although this measure was withdrawn from the final text, the episode reflects an instability that deters legitimate investment.
From an evidence-based perspective, 2025 figures reveal that some 25.2 million citizens placed bets, generating an accumulated GGR of 36.96 billion reais. This translates into an average net expenditure of 122 reais per month per bettor, a figure that ABC-BET uses to contextualize the real impact of gambling on the domestic economy. The entity argues that a regulated market does not depend on problem gambling as a business logic, but rather benefits from traceability and self-exclusion mechanisms that illegality ignores.
The public health debate is another priority for the association, which recognizes that gambling disorder is a multifactorial problem that cannot be attributed exclusively to a recently regulated sector. Blaming legal betting for historical social ills is, according to ABC-BET, seeking a scapegoat while ignoring other scourges such as financial pyramids, patrimonial fraud, and organized crime. Excessive or punitive regulation only serves to weaken the official channel and strengthen those who are accountable to no one.
The positive economic impact of the sector is verifiable and extends to multiple areas of social interest. In 2025, legal transfers derived from gambling amounted to 4.53 billion reais, allocated to education, public security, tourism, and sports, including vital support for women's football and massive cultural events. However, ABC-BET points out a worrying contradiction: while public discourse characterizes gambling as a serious health crisis, only 1% of these allocations are reserved for the Ministry of Health, suggesting a lack of coherence in government priorities.
The association's conclusion is that Brazil needs to strengthen its supervisory capacity instead of resorting to prohibitionism. The path to sports integrity and citizen protection lies in proportionate and secure regulations that ensure the activity is auditable and compatible with the public interest. Defending the regulated market does not imply protecting abuses, but rather ensuring that clear rules exist to address problems with seriousness and institutional transparency.
Tags: Brazil, Lula da Silva, ABC-BET, Brazil gambling regulation, Brazil online gambling