A suggested ban on licensed online casinos in Brazil may cause the share of illegal gambling sites to surge from 41% to a staggering 82%, according to research conducted by the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL).
This forecast stems from the extensive availability of internet domains facilitating illegal gambling without authorization from the Ministry of Finance. The ANJL's technical study revealed that between June and August of this year, Brazil registered an average of 13.7 new clandestine gambling websites each day.
In just one week of monitoring from September 11 to 18, the ANJL identified 6,409 illegal betting domains that were accessible to users.
Plínio Lemos Jorge, the president of ANJL, noted that these figures illustrate the potential impact of enforcing a ban on legal betting in the country, which would likely push millions of bettors toward illegal sites. The vast majority of these sites are hosted overseas and do not contribute taxes.
“Our study showed that of the websites located outside the national scope, 55.8% use a distribution network that conceals the original hosting,” Lemos Jorge explained. “And 98.3% of the domains do not end in ‘.br’. Everything that is currently prohibited to ensure the protection of bettors and their finances will become widely accessible.”
In addition to jeopardizing the more than 25 million bettors registered on legal platforms—who would now be exposed to illegal sites—the prohibition of casino betting in Brazil could lead to an annual revenue loss between BRL3.6 billion ($700.9 million) and BRL7.4 billion.
“Brazil stands to lose in every sense,” Lemos Jorge emphasized. “We will have millions who won’t stop gambling; they will merely begin accessing these sites, which do not pay taxes.
“The most vulnerable social classes, which the government aims to protect, become increasingly unprotected. After all, these platforms lack mechanisms to safeguard financial and mental health, such as blocking beneficiaries of social programs or self-exclusion options.”
