ANJL: Ban on licensed online casino could cause the Brazil illegal market to double in size
A proposed ban on online casinos for licensed betting companies in Brazil could increase the market share of illegal sites from the current 41% to 82%, according to a study by the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL).
The forecast is due to the abundant supply of internet domains offering illegal gambling, without proper authorisation from the Ministry of Finance. According to a technical study by the ANJL, from June to August of this year alone, an average of 13.7 new clandestine websites were registered per day in Brazil.
In just one week of monitoring by the ANJL – between 11-18 September – 6,409 illegal betting domains were identified as accessible to users.
Hidden source hosting
According to the president of ANJL, Plínio Lemos Jorge, the numbers show how a potential ban on betting in the country would likely drive millions of bettors to illegal websites, the vast majority of which are hosted abroad and do not collect any taxes.
“Our study showed that of the websites located outside the national scope, 55.8% use a distribution network that hides the original hosting,” Lemos Jorge said. “And 98.3% of the domains are not ending in ‘.br’. Everything that is currently prohibited to guarantee the protection of bettors and their money will become widely accessible.”
In addition to harming the majority of the more than 25 million bettors registered on legal platforms who will be exposed to illegal sites, banning casino betting in Brazil would cause the country to lose between BRL3.6 billion ($700.9 million) and BRL7.4 billion in annual revenue.
“In other words, Brazil loses in every sense,” added Lemos Jorge. “We will have millions of people who will not stop gambling. They will simply start accessing these sites, which do not collect any taxes whatsoever.
“The most vulnerable social strata, which are precisely the ones the government wants to protect, become even more unprotected. After all, these platforms do not offer any mechanism to protect financial and mental health, such as blocking beneficiaries of social programmes or self-exclusion tools.”