IBIA Calls on Congress to Reconsider Brazil’s Fixed-Odds Betting Ban

The International Betting Integrity Association on 14 жовтня 2026, published an evidence-based study of Brazil’s ban on fixed-odds betting and online gaming, warning that prohibition will push betting activity into unlicensed channels and make suspicious wagering harder to detect, and calling on Congress to reconsider the measure.

The study, titled Brazil: The Cost of Prohibition and written by IBIA chief executive Khalid Ali, draws on regulatory assessments, market estimates and the association’s suspicious betting data. It responds to the provisional measure under which Brazil banned fixed-odds betting, including sports betting and online gaming, on 25 вересня 2026, 21 months after opening its regulated market. Implementation of the measure is under way while Congress weighs whether to make it permanent.

In the announcement, Ali said the association calls on Congress to reconsider Provisional Measure No. 1,394/2026 through an evidence-based assessment of its risks and impacts, supported by open dialogue with the industry, and that enforcement efforts should concentrate on blocking unlicensed offshore operators.

The Pre-Ban Regulated Market

According to the full brief, Law 14.790/2023 created the national market, which launched on 1 січня 2025, under the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting and covered online and land-based fixed-odds betting and online gaming, with no land-based casinos. More than 100 licence applications were received and more than 80 operators were licensed. Federal licences ran five years at a BRL 30 million authorisation fee covering betting, online casino and up to three brands, with a BRL 5 million reserve and BRL 30 million minimum capital also required. Five states, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, Minas Gerais, Paraíba and Maranhão, licensed operators in parallel within their own territories.

Licensed operators worked under identification and player-protection requirements: know-your-customer checks with facial recognition matched against the federal tax database, deposit and time limits, and self-exclusion, with a national cross-operator self-exclusion platform live from грудень 2025. Welfare recipients were barred from opening accounts with licensed operators, and credit cards, cryptocurrency, cash and third-party payments were prohibited. Pre-ban enforcement combined domain blocking carried out with Anatel covering 13,000 sites, payment blocking and advertising removal. Around 80 federal operators served roughly 25 million bettors.

Federal licensees paid a 12% gross gambling revenue tax at launch in 2025, rising to 13% in 2026 under Complementary Law 224/2025, with 14% legislated for 2027 and 15% from 2028. Citing H2 Gambling Capital data, the brief puts the pre-ban regulated market at roughly BRL 40 billion annualised, with channelisation reaching about 79% of betting gross gambling revenue within eighteen months.

IBIA’s comparative assessment rated Brazil’s pre-ban framework 77 out of 100, between Portugal (68) and Great Britain (86). The category scores were regulation 22 out of 30, taxation 12 out of 20, product 19 out of 20, advertising 16 out of 20 and integrity 8 out of 10, under a methodology that applies 27 criteria across five weighted categories and was carried out in conjunction with H2 Gambling Capital.

Offshore Estimates and Integrity Alerts

H2 Gambling Capital estimates that, without a legal alternative, around 60% of the activity served by Brazil’s regulated market, equivalent to roughly R$25 billion, could migrate to unlicensed operators; on that basis the illegal market could rise from around R$17 billion to approximately R$42 billion. The brief cites H2’s 29 вересня 2026 report, Assessing the Impact of Brazil’s Online Betting Ban. IBIA said consumers making that shift would lose identity checks, self-exclusion and payment safeguards, while authorities would lose access to information licensed operators were required to provide. The brief also lists lost public revenue and lost sports funding among the consequences, noting that most top-flight football clubs carried betting sponsors before the ban.

On integrity, IBIA reported 25 suspicious betting alerts involving Brazilian sports in 2025, the first full year of the regulated market, against an annual average of 11 between 2021 and 2024. The yearly figures were 11 in 2021, 14 in 2022, 11 in 2023, 7 in 2024 and 25 in 2025. Across the full period, 68 alerts covered eight sports: football accounted for 51, basketball for six and tennis for six, with one each in beach volleyball, futsal, sinuca americana, table tennis and volleyball. The 2025 alerts comprised 19 in football, five in basketball and one in sinuca americana.

IBIA said the 2025 increase reflects stronger monitoring and reporting under regulation rather than more manipulation; the brief defines an alert as a signal of suspicion, not proven manipulation. With no licensed operators, the brief states, nobody is obliged to report suspicious betting, and the regulator and law enforcement lose access to Brazilian market and customer account data.

“Fewer alerts after prohibition will not necessarily mean less suspicious betting,” Ali wrote. “They may simply mean less information about it.”

The brief records that regulated operator monitoring supported sporting sanctions and criminal prosecutions in Brazil, including recent convictions, and that match-fixing is a specific criminal offence under the General Sports Law carrying two to six years’ imprisonment plus fines. With roughly 25% of betting turnover already offshore before the ban, the brief states that 100% is now offshore and that the protective monitoring framework is no longer in effect.

IBIA’s Recommendation

IBIA urges Congress to reconsider the prohibition and allow the future of Brazil’s betting market to be determined through the ordinary legislative process, informed by open dialogue with the sector, a clear risk assessment and a published impact assessment. The association said the existing integrity framework, including suspicious betting monitoring, reporting and cooperation with authorities, must be preserved, that enforcement should focus on unlicensed operators, and that gambling-related harms should be addressed through targeted measures within the regulated market.

The International Betting Integrity Association is a not-for-profit association funded by betting operators. Its Global Monitoring & Alert Platform (Global MAP) uses operator intelligence from more than 90 members representing over 200 betting brands, monitors more than 1.5 million sports events a year across more than 80 sports, and analyses over US$300 billion of global betting turnover annually.

Under the timetable set out in the brief, Brazil’s existing betting licences lapse on 25 жовтня 2026, and Congress has 120 days to confirm or reject the provisional measure.