Online betting companies are expected to earn US$4.139 billion (around R$22 billion) in Brazil in 2025, positioning the country as the fifth largest market in the world for the sector, according to data obtained exclusively by BBC News Brasil with the international consultancy Regulus Partners, focused on the sports and leisure sector.
The projections, made based on the financial reports of public companies and available information on the values traded in the sector, place the United States in a distant first place, with net revenue (after taxes) estimated at US$ 17.312 billion, followed by the United Kingdom (US$ 9.901 billion), Italy (US$ 4.617 billion) and Russia (US$ 4.515 billion).
The numbers are in line with statistics from the Prizes and Betting Secretariat, which recently announced that the 78 companies currently authorized to operate in the country had revenues of R$17.4 billion in the first half of 2025.
This is the first time that Brazil is considered on Regulus Partners’ list of largest markets, as until 2024 there was no regulation for betting operations in the country.
Even without precise data from previous years, Paul Leyland, a specialist in the area of economic, financial and business models in gambling at the consultancy, highlights the aggressive growth of the Brazilian market in the last decade, which was estimated at just US$300 million in 2014.
“The biggest boost came especially with the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic,” he comments.
But it wasn’t just the social isolation measures. A series of factors combined to place Brazil among the five largest betting markets in the world.
The historic ban on gambling, Brazilians’ openness to new technologies and digital consumption, the long window between the legalization and regulation of online betting, the companies’ marketing offensive and even the success of pix are among the factors listed by experts and industry sources heard by the report.
From the lottery to the cell phone screen
Online betting was legalized in Brazil in 2018, but regulation only came in 2024. For seven years, companies in the sector operated practically without rules, highlights economist Victo Silva, researcher at the Center for International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School.
During this period, in Silva’s opinion, bets put into practice an arsenal of strategies to attract bettors without any type of control.
With this, they transformed Brazil into a kind of “behavioral economics laboratory”, a reference to the area that studies the influence of cognitive, emotional and social factors on our financial decisions.
He cites as an example his own consumer experience on betting sites, a much more recreational journey than that of someone who goes to the lottery.
On the cell phone screen, an extensive menu of bets on real and fictional events is presented amidst various incentive mechanisms, bonus alerts, invitations to “missions”, rewards and casino games.
The environment is not only inviting, it is also intuitive, to make the user’s path to placing a bet as easy as possible.
“[As empresas de apostas online] created platforms where betting is simple. In economic jargon, transaction costs have been removed. You don’t need to go to the lottery, you can do it from the couch at home, taking your cell phone out of your pocket”, says Silva to the report.
The pix also fits into this logic. The instant and cost-free payment system launched in 2021 by the Central Bank contributed to making betting much more straightforward.
In countries like Colombia and Mexico, for example, many bettors make the deposit and withdraw the prize in cash, at a physical establishment, says Antonio Forjaz, general director for Latin America at Entain, owner of Sportingbet.
In these cases, online betting has an offline stage, which in practice becomes an obstacle in the bettor’s journey.
“In Colombia, for example, there are deposits that are made at newsstands, in little shops, you know? Here it’s different, everything is pix, everything is instantaneous”, points out the executive, commenting that the high level of banking access among the population and the consolidated digital payments ecosystem make Brazil a safer place to operate.
According to him, the country is currently one of the most important markets for Entain, a British multinational.
“It’s like the USA, a country with high growth and a lot of focus [por parte da empresa]because it already has considerable revenue and because we really believe in the potential”, he states.
André Gelfi, director-president of the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR) and managing partner of Betsson, adds that, in addition to the high level of banking, Brazilians are much more open to new technologies, to “consuming through digital”.
“And this is an industry that is completely digitalized,” he comments.
Another factor that, in the executive’s view, also explains the growth of online betting in Brazil is the long history of banning gambling in the country, which created a kind of repressed demand in this segment.
“Brazil has had an almost total ban on gambling for more than 80 years. The moment an alternative game or entertainment with these characteristics appears and is on your phone, in your pocket, people say: ‘Wow, that’s cool! I’ve never seen that before'”, points out Gelfi.
Brazil, the country of betting (and football)
Overt and widespread advertising is also an important component, according to sources heard by BBC News Brasil.
Previously unknown, the brands of betting companies now appear to Brazilians with great frequency.
They are on football players’ shirts, in Carnival boxes, on social media, on influencers’ pages and even on municipal buses in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
This movement, in the opinion of economist Victo Silva, helped to “normalize” the betting activity and the bets themselves.
From the companies’ perspective, Forjaz points out that, in a market where products have little differentiation, as is the case with betting, advertising is a strategy to stick in the memory of potential consumers.
And, in this sense, football has acted as one of the biggest drivers of betting with a dual role, as an advertising vehicle and object of betting.
In recent years, betting companies have poured hundreds of millions of reais into the Brazilian football championship.
Among the 20 teams that are currently in Series A of the Brasileirão, 18 display bet marks on their shirts. The five largest sponsorship contracts total more than half a billion reais, according to values recently reported by the sports press.
At the top of the list is Betano, with sponsorship worth R$220 million to Flamengo. The brand belongs to the multinational Kaizen Gaming International, based in Greece, which declined the report’s request for an interview.
Then comes the Romanian Superbet (R$ 113 million to São Paulo), the Brazilian Esportes da Sorte (R$ 103 million to Corinthians), Sportingbet (R$ 100 million to Palmeiras) and the Brazilian H2Bet (R$ 60 million to Atlético Mineiro).
The investment reflects an affinity that, for companies in the sector, has always been very clear: Brazilians love football and sport is the universe that concentrates the largest volume of bets – therefore, it made sense to dive into this world.
It worked out. Now, in addition to cheering, sounding the referee’s horn and commenting on the round on Monday, the Brazilian weighs in on the game’s outcome, goal difference and card application.
Ban, release and the middle ground
Voices like that of economist Victo Silva, however, are critical of this marriage.
Based on the principles of behavioral economics, he argues that, as football is something rooted in Brazilian society, the connection with the sport tends to “legitimize” the activity of betting.
In his view, this is the opposite of what the country should be seeking at this moment, given the growing problem of betting addiction and the commitment of many families’ income to the activity, which the economist called “betization of family income” in a text published during the discussion on regulation last year.
A technical analysis released by the Central Bank at that time showed that five million people belonging to Bolsa Família beneficiary families had sent money to betting companies using pix.
The data led the STF (Supreme Federal Court) to determine the restriction on the use of resources from assistance programs for online betting, a measure implemented this month of October by the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets.
“When you want the population to stop smoking, for example, you don’t facilitate a mechanism that puts a pack of cigarettes in people’s pockets, effortlessly. You put in locks, regulate it”, highlights Silva.
The comparison with the act of smoking is not gratuitous: advertising of cigarette brands at sporting events was banned in Brazil in the mid-1990s.
For the economist, gambling is, like cigarettes, products known in economic jargon as “tempting goods”, whose consumption should be discouraged.
Which does not mean prohibiting, he says, since the prohibition ends up being circumvented and opens space for an illegal market with also very negative effects on society.
The solution, he adds, would be to find a middle ground, with public policies that discourage betting – which, in his view, has remained off the government’s radar for now.
“Bets did their homework in terms of understanding behavioral economics. They really understand how to exploit our tendencies, biases, weaknesses, herd behavior, social legitimacy”, comments Silva.
“This has gone a long way, for now, from an attempt at more responsible regulation [por parte do governo]”, he adds.
The regulations in force today prohibit advertising that targets children and adolescents.
Since 2023, a bill has been pending in Congress that proposes a list of tougher restrictions, including a ban on advertisements featuring athletes, artists, influencers and other public figures.
The PL was approved by the Senate in May 2025 and is currently at a standstill in the Chamber.
For André Gelfi, from the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming, an entity that brings together companies behind 24 betting brands, this discussion is “premature”.
Their argument is that there is still a large illegal online betting market and that advertising would help channel demand to companies that operate legally and are duly registered.
Forjaz, from Entain, expresses a similar view, adding that in the illegal market “there is no identity verification, no protection against money laundering, no verification of use by minors, no type of communication commitment or payment of tax.”
Regarding the relationship with football, the executive states that the resources injected by the sector into the sport have helped Brazilian football to develop.
“So, if we take it away from football, will there be the advantage of not having as many brands visible to people? Maybe. There will be a very clear disadvantage, that the clubs will not continue to develop as they have been developing”, adds Forjaz.
