Brazil opens 25,000 online gambling regulatory files to the public
Brazil's Ministry of Finance has reversed course in response to criticism over opacity in the online gambling regime, announcing that it will make more than 25,000 documents related to the authorization processes of fixed-odds operators available to the public. The measure comes amidst the countdown to the 2026 World Cup and marks a turning point in the relationship between the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting and civil society, which is closely monitoring the first year of the regulated market.
The announcement was made jointly by Minister Dario Durigan and Secretary Daniele Cardoso. According to the official schedule, the publication will be progressive on the ministry's portal and will cover all concluded files, once personal, tax, and banking data protected by Brazilian privacy legislation are removed. To expedite this task, the Ministry of Finance will assemble a task force with the Comptroller General of the Union, which will be responsible for reviewing and anonymizing the material before its dissemination.
The decision was announced just one day after Brazilian media questioned restrictions on access to some of the documentation that the ministry itself had handled during the authorization process. Durigan defended the change in criteria with a direct political message, associated with the transparency hallmark of the Lula da Silva government, and assured that the administration does not seek to hide information about the companies that entered the regulated market in January.
Reinforcement of oversight during the World Cup
In parallel, the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting announced that it will intensify monitoring and oversight during the FIFA World Cup. The focus will be on the advertising and commercial campaigns of authorized operators, an area where warnings and formal guidelines have already been issued to reinforce the responsible gambling rules provided for in Law 14.790. The SPA also held recent meetings with state prosecutors, consumer protection agencies, and public entities to coordinate controls over the sector's advertising practices.
Another sign of the shift towards prevention is the call for the first Responsible Gambling Seminar, scheduled for June 16. The meeting will address the relationship between online gambling, mental health, financial health, and commercial communication, an agenda that the regulator had been postponing and is now trying to push before the peak activity of the World Cup.
For Latin America, the opening of Brazilian regulatory files carries enormous weight. Brazil is the jurisdiction that sets the pace for online gambling regulation in the region, and the decision to publicly expose how dozens of operators were authorized sets a transparency standard that the private sector is already beginning to compare with other markets such as Colombia, Argentina, or Peru. If the dissemination is completed within the promised deadlines, it will be the first time that the region will have massive and organized access to the real criteria with which a Latin American regulator evaluates iGaming licenses.
Tags: Brazil, Brazil regulation, online betting Brazil, SPA, regulatory transparency, 2026 World Cup