Brazil Blocks 39,000 Illegal Betting Sites Since 2025

Brazil has blocked more than 39,000 illegal betting websites since its regulated gambling market launched in January 2025, Finance Minister Dario Durigan confirmed at an April 24 press conference in Brasília where authorities also declared prediction markets illegal under federal law.

Scale of Enforcement

The blocking campaign is a coordinated operation involving the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, and Anatel, Brazil’s national telecommunications regulator. Internet service providers have been instructed to restrict access to platforms operating outside the country’s licensed framework, with Anatel executing the technical blocks across the network infrastructure.

Enforcement has gone beyond site-level restrictions. Authorities confirmed the removal of 203 unauthorised applications and the issuance of 1,665 notifications in connection with suspected irregular activity. Working alongside payment institutions and financial service providers, officials have also closed 697 accounts linked to betting operations deemed suspicious. The strategy is designed to cut the financial infrastructure supporting unlicensed operators, not merely restrict user access.

Consumer protection body Senacon has increased its involvement in the effort, focusing on identifying abusive practices and informing users on how to verify whether a platform holds a valid authorisation.

Government Position

Brazil has established clear rules for the operation of fixed-odds betting, and there will be no room for those who try to operate outside this system or create structures to circumvent the legislation.

— Finance Minister Dario Durigan

Durigan has framed the enforcement push partly in terms of household debt, a concern that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has publicly linked to the spread of unregulated online gambling. The Ministry has been categorical that platforms lacking the required authorisations do not carry the safeguards mandated under Brazilian law, including user identification mechanisms, financial monitoring and consumer protection obligations.

Regis Dudena, Secretary of Economic Reforms, drew a clear boundary around the scope of Brazil’s regulated framework: fixed-odds sports betting and online gaming are covered; event-based contracts and other betting formats not tied to those categories are not. “Any other type of betting is prohibited,” Dudena stated at the press conference.

Prediction Markets Add New Dimension

The April 24 announcement ran alongside a separate but related action. The National Monetary Council issued Resolution No. 5.298, formally excluding prediction market products from the list of permissible derivatives underlying assets. Sporting events, virtual gaming events, and real or virtual events of a political, electoral, social, cultural or entertainment nature are explicitly excluded under the resolution.

Anatel began blocking 28 prediction market platforms on the same day, with Polymarket and Kalshi among those affected. Kalshi had announced plans to expand into Brazil through a partnership with XP Investments prior to the ban. Durigan was direct on the legal position: “The product offered by these platforms is not eligible for regulation. The blocking action is due to non-compliance with the legislation.”

The prediction market action adds a second front to Brazil’s broader enforcement picture and signals that the government intends to apply the same blocking logic to new categories of unlicensed activity as they emerge. Durigan confirmed that platforms that appear after the ban will face the same treatment: “Currently, 28 have already been blocked, and others that emerge will suffer the same fate.”

Context for Licensed Operators

Brazil’s regulated market — which generated $7bn in GGR in its first year of operation with an estimated 25 million bettors — has been accompanied by persistent concerns about unlicensed competition from day one. The scale of the blocking effort, now exceeding 39,000 sites, reflects both the size of the illegal market operators faced at launch and the government’s stated intent to use enforcement as a structural tool rather than an occasional deterrent.

The SPA’s open consultation on B2B supplier licensing is running in parallel, a process expected to extend Brazil’s compliance obligations down the supply chain and further narrow the space available to unlicensed platforms and the infrastructure supporting them.

Durigan indicated that enforcement intensity will increase through May, with additional measures under consideration as the government assesses the effectiveness of access restrictions relative to the financial disruption strategy.

Source: Ministry of Finance, Brazil