Brazil’s restrictions on online betting have been followed by a sharp increase in suspicious gambling links and websites, according to monitoring data released by the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL), raising questions about whether gambling activity is shifting to unauthorized platforms.
The findings come amid differing assessments of the ban’s economic impact. In an interview with O Globo on October 14, Guilherme Mello, executive secretary of the Ministry of Planning, questioned whether ending betting would necessarily reduce economic activity, suggesting that consumers could redirect their spending elsewhere.
“It’s a change of hands of money”, Mello said. Federal Revenue Secretary Robinson Barreirinhas expressed a similar position in an October 8 interview with the newspaper.
However, new data suggests the “change of hands” doesn’t necessarily happen, reports BNL Data. Instead of stopping betting altogether, many bettors seem to be migrating to illegal platforms.
The LegitBet monitoring system, in a report dated October 9 and shared by ANJL, recorded 41,716 suspicious websites as of October 8, including 30,593 that had been confirmed as matching monitored characteristics. The system identified 79 additional suspicious websites on October 8 alone, confirming 55 of them. Daily detections between October 2 and 7 ranged from 70 to 233 new domains.
The report distinguishes suspicious activity from legally established violations. Individual websites are not automatically classified as illegal, with their legal status subject to assessment by the relevant authorities. Since October 5, the monitoring figures have covered only websites targeting Brazilian users.
Domains already included on telecommunications regulator Anatel’s blocking list and websites operated by authorized companies are excluded, meaning the reported totals may not capture the full scale of unauthorized activity.
Search engines accounted for 32% of website detections on October 8, while existing databases contributed 30% and networks of previously monitored websites accounted for 18%. Telegram channels generated 13% of detections, followed by social media platforms, including Kwai, Instagram, Reddit and Snapchat, at 8%. Of the websites identified through Telegram, 90% were confirmed as suspicious.
The newly confirmed websites also displayed recurring characteristics. Among the 55 domains confirmed on October 8, 82% contained numbers in their names, including one group of 13 addresses sharing the same name with different numerical combinations.
The .com extension represented 43.6% of these websites, followed by .vip at 12.7% and .bet at 7.3%. Other extensions included .org, .cc, .co, .net and .top. The websites advertised “Fortune games,” payments through Brazil’s PIX instant payment system, mobile phone-only registration, daily bonuses and referral incentives, with one offering rewards of up to 1 million Brazilian reais.
The increase was particularly pronounced in the circulation of suspicious links. Between September 8 and 23, monitored channels distributed an average of 77 such links daily. Following the September 25 implementation of the provisional measure prohibiting betting, the average rose to 549 links per day between October 1 and 7, approximately seven times the earlier level.
Link circulation reached 948 on October 7, one day after authorized betting operators took their websites and applications offline, before declining to 733 on October 8. The developments follow a period in which unauthorized operators already represented more than 40% of betting activity despite 22 months of regulation.