The Brazilian government officially issued an expulsion order to the prediction markets on Friday. Finance Minister Dario Durigan and Chief of Staff of the Presidency Miriam Belchior held a press conference announcing that prediction markets are considered illegal operations in Brazil, and the National Telecommunications Agency has started actions, currently blocking 28 platforms that offer event contracts. Durigan stated bluntly at the press conference: No one is allowed to bet that it will not rain tomorrow. The National Monetary Committee also passed a resolution on the same day, clearly excluding sports events, virtual online game events, and any real or virtual events of political, electoral, social, cultural, and entertainment nature from the qualified underlying assets of derivative contracts. This means that prediction market platforms like Polymarket, which operate under the guise of derivatives in Brazil, have been officially characterized as illegal. Durigan emphasized that the government's goal is to curb all forms of illegal gambling, and since the launch of the regulated online gambling market in Brazil in January 2025, 39,000 unlicensed gambling websites have been blocked, and prediction market platforms will face the same fate.
From sports betting to weather election predictions, Brazil draws legal lines
Minister of Economic Reform Regis Dudena explained the government's regulatory logic at the press conference. The existing legal framework in Brazil—Law No. 14790—only covers fixed-odds gambling and online games, and gambling forms unrelated to sports events and online games were excluded from the regulatory scope from the beginning. Although prediction markets have all the characteristics of gambling, they were packaged as derivatives to enter the Brazilian market, which is precisely the trigger point for the Brazilian government's action. The National Monetary Committee, at the government's request, made a clear definition of the scope of derivatives, and prediction markets were expelled from the list of qualified assets. Dudena clearly stated that any platform offering products not within the SPA regulatory scope or not complying with the National Monetary Committee's resolution will be blocked. This means that Karlxi, who announced last month a plan to enter Brazil in cooperation with XP International, is also likely to be denied entry.
At the press conference, Minister of Prizes and Gambling Affairs Danielle Correa Cardoso directly characterized the operation mode of the prediction markets as gambling disguised as derivatives and emphasized that this is illegal and not recognized by the Brazilian government. National Minister of Consumer Affairs Ricardo Morishita reiterated the consumer protection baseline: all betting behaviors not covered by these two regulations are completely prohibited, and users should seek protection from regulated platforms through the bet.br domain.
PASA official website continues to track the dynamics of gambling regulation and enforcement of prediction markets in Latin America, noting that Brazil's move has brought the legality issues of prediction markets, which have caused controversy in multiple markets around the world, to the Southern Hemisphere. From the federal and state jurisdiction disputes in the United States, to the regulatory path divergence between Gibraltar and Malta in Europe, to the direct characterization and blocking by Brazil, global regulation of prediction markets is forming a completely different set of response maps.
————
This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders" gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
Original in-depth gambling channel: https://t.me/gamblingdeep
Free data reports: @pasa_research
PASA Matrix: @pasa002_bot
PASA official website: https://www.pasa.news
