Yield Sec data: Legal operators could cover just 9% of Brazil’s betting market
Applications for a legal betting licence were submitted by 114 online operators before the 20 August deadline, which marked the end of a 90- day window for applicants to secure a licence by the 1 January 2025 launch date.
The data considers that each licence provides three skins, meaning up to 342 brands could be launched by the 114 operators licensed in January.
Yield Sec estimates this would cover around 9% of Brazil’s online gambling market, with the other 90% under the control of illegal operators.
Its data also predicts 49 million Brazilians, or 23% of the country’s population, gambled via the black market in the first half of 2024. This is compared to full year 2023 which saw 41 million Brazilians or 19% of the population gamble illegally online.
As set out in Normative Ordinance No 827, those offering online betting without the required licence from 1 January will face sanctions. Under the rules illegal operators face punitive measures including a fine of up to BRL2bn (£269.8m/€320.3m/$354m) and a ban on applying for a licence, which can last 10 years in the most serious cases.
Brazil has faced a longstanding battle with the black market, but through the licensing process, the government is recruiting digital media giants Google and Meta to remove advertising for illegal sites.
New rules stipulate legal operators must use the Bet.br domain to make them easier to identify and the government is considering how it can block illegal sites from using local instant payment method Pix.
Betano tops Brazil betting searches
Yield Sec uses AI to trawl the web for gambling-related keywords, and then refines the gathered information. The company applies machine learning to make illegal-market predictions.
Betano tops Yield Sec’s breakdown of most searched gambling brands in Brazil, receiving around 180 million searches between July 2023 and July 2024. Betano and Bet365 were by far the most-searched brands, with Bet365 accounting for approximately 175 million searches against Sportingbet in third-placed with almost 30 million searches.
Among the other top-searched brands were Blaze ( and KTO, in fourth and fifth respectively, while Pixbet and Betfair were also in the top 10.
Problems with illegal gambling aren’t exclusive to Brazil, however as Yield Sec data suggests up to $5.1tn was wagered worldwide on the black market in 2023.