The latest data from Yield Sec, exclusively seen by iGB, suggest that licensed betting brands may only represent about 9% of Brazil's total online betting market. The company states that 3,674 illegal operators were active in the country in the first half of the year, with 1,587 affiliates promoting them.
Legal betting license applications were submitted by 114 online operators before the August 20 deadline, which marked the end of a 90-day window for applicants to secure a license by the launch date of January 1, 2025.
The data considers that each license provides three skins, meaning up to 342 brands could be launched by the 114 licensed operators in January.
Yield Sec estimates that this would cover about 9% of Brazil's online betting market, with the remaining 90% under the control of illegal operators.
Their data also forecast that 49 million Brazilians, or 23% of the country's population, gambled in the black market in the first half of 2024. This compares to the entire year of 2023, when 41 million Brazilians or 19% of the population gambled illegally online.
As established in Normative Ordinance No. 827, those offering online betting without the necessary license from January 1 will face sanctions. According to the rules, illegal operators face punitive measures, including a fine of up to R$ 2 billion (US$ 354 million) and a ban on applying for a license, which can last 10 years in the most severe cases.
Brazil faces a long-standing battle with the black market, but through the licensing process, the government is recruiting digital media giants Google and Meta to remove advertising from illegal sites.
The new rules stipulate that 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 the local instant payment method Pix.
Betano leads betting searches in Brazil
Yield Sec uses AI to scour the web for gambling-related keywords and then refines the collected information. The company applies machine learning to make illegal market predictions.
Betano leads Yield Sec's analysis of the most searched gambling brands in Brazil, receiving about 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 place with nearly 30 million searches.
Among the other most searched brands were Blaze and KTO, in fourth and fifth, respectively, while Pixbet and Betfair were also in the top 10.
The issues with illegal gambling are not unique to Brazil, however, as Yield Sec's data suggest, up to US$ 5.1 trillion was gambled worldwide in the black market in 2023.
Source: iGB
