Brazil Seeks to Block 5,209 Betting Sites as Industry Counts of Illegal Sites Diverge

The justice and finance ministries say they have asked for 5,209 betting domains to be blocked since the ban and reached channels on Telegram with more than a million members. The licensed industry says illegal sites are multiplying, but its own monitors disagree by a factor of ten on how fast, and one says almost none are new.

• Brazil's Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) and Finance Ministry had asked for 5,209 betting domains to be taken down by 29 September, and the telecoms regulator Anatel had ordered 2,387 of them blocked, four days after the ban on betting took effect
• The ministries also had 300 Facebook pages and 90 Instagram profiles removed, notified 186 betting apps for removal from Apple's and Google's stores by 6 October, and on 27 September said they had identified 43 Telegram channels and groups with 212,634 members promoting betting
• A justice ministry official said Pix transactions had fallen about 10% since the measure, citing Central Bank figures, as the Central Bank works on the payment block
• The licensed industry says the ban is pushing players towards illegal sites, citing monitors that counted anything from a few hundred to 6,401 new illegal sites in a week
• Iron Security, which runs the Bet Legal monitor with the operators' association ANJL, found that 320 of the 322 newly detected domains it could date had been bought before the ban

The Government Reports Its First Four Days of Enforcement

The MJSP and the Finance Ministry presented their figures at a press conference at the Palácio da Justiça in Brasília on Tuesday 29 September. Of the 5,209 domains whose takedown had been requested, 1,386 were flagged by the National Secretariat of Digital Rights (Sedigi) at the MJSP and 3,823 by the Finance Ministry's Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA), according to the ministry. Anatel had ordered 2,387 of them taken down. Octavio Penna Pieranti, a member of Anatel's board, said the regulator had notified the 5,209 sites and some 21,000 internet providers of the blocks. Justice Minister Wellington César Lima e Silva said the work of blocking and holding operators to account would be "permanente e constante" (permanent and constant) from now on.

Social media is the second front. The operation removed 300 Facebook pages and 90 Instagram profiles, the Cyber Operations Laboratory (Ciberlab) began work on TikTok on Tuesday, and eight platforms, Google, Meta, YouTube, X, Telegram, TikTok, Kwai and Discord, were notified to remove betting advertising within ten days, according to the MJSP. João Brant, digital policy secretary at the presidency's communications office, set out the dates: advertising must come down by 5 October, Apple and Google must remove the 186 notified apps on 6 October, and platforms must remove notified content by 8 October. National Public Security Secretary Chico Lucas said Pix transactions had fallen by about 10% since the measure was published, citing Central Bank data, and, according to the ministry, that teams were tracing the money in order to choke illegal operations financially.

Telegram Channels Promised "260% de Lucro Mensal"

On 27 September the MJSP said Ciberlab had identified 43 active Telegram channels and groups promoting betting and online casino, with 212,634 members between them. Nine had more than 10,000 members each and accounted for 172,359 users, or 81% of the total. The largest, with 42,791 members, published "signals" for casino games; another, with 28,601, was dedicated to Fortune Tiger. The ministry documented promises of "260% de lucro mensal" (260% monthly profit), betting "robots", claimed hit rates of up to 99.8%, and a channel pointing users to what it described as a fake Sportingbet site. By 29 September the ministry put the total membership of illegal betting channels, groups and profiles it had reached on Telegram at 1,014,722.

The Industry's Figures on Illegal Sites Vary Tenfold

The licensed sector's case is that the ban has handed the market to illegal operators. SBC News reported on 29 September that illegal operators had risen from 331 to 575 in the 24 hours after the announcement, an increase of 74%, figures shared by Amilton Noble, executive director of the lottery technology provider Hebara, from the Bet Legal monitor. In their petition to the Supreme Federal Tribunal, the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) and the Brazilian Institute for Responsible Gaming (IBJR) cited 833 new illegal sites since the ban, from bet-legal.org, according to BNLData. BNLData itself published a restricted survey produced for an unnamed industry body that counted 6,401 new illegal betting sites between 22 and 28 September, with a daily average of 914 against 54 in early September and a peak of 3,024 on Sunday 27 September.

Bet Legal's operator gives a more cautious reading. Iron Security, a cybersecurity firm that works with licensed operators and with the ANJL, records the date a site is detected, the date its domain was bought and the date it obtained a security certificate, its chief executive Diego Terrani told NEXT.io. Of 486 sites detected from 6pm on the day of the announcement, the company could date the purchase of 322: 320 had been bought before the measure, on average about ten months earlier, and two afterwards. Terrani cautioned that an old domain may have been repurposed after the measure. On the gap with BNLData's figures, he said: "A count that multiplies to 3,000 on Sunday, while the other publishes 76, is recording a different event."

Every Count Here Measures Something Different

None of these numbers measures what both sides are arguing about, which is how many Brazilians will bet illegally after 6 October. Bet Legal counts sites it has verified one by one and began continuous monitoring only on 20 September, so it has no baseline for earlier months. BNLData's survey uses a wider capture, counts each site once on the day it is first seen and has not named its client. Both count web addresses, not operators, and a single illegal operator can run dozens of mirrors to replace the ones that are blocked. The government's 5,209 is a cumulative list of takedown requests, which will include sites that existed long before the measure. Iron Security's purchase-date finding points to detection catching up with an existing illegal market rather than a new one appearing overnight. That does not support the headline reading of a "near-100%" jump in illegal operators, which is how SBC News headlined figures showing a 74% daily rise in detected sites.

The Enforcement Figures Show Effort, Not Yet Effect

The government's numbers describe requests and notices. Anatel has ordered fewer than half of the requested domains blocked, the app store and platform deadlines fall between 5 and 8 October, and the Pix figure covers a few days in which licensed operators had already stopped taking deposits, so a fall was expected whatever illegal operators did. Brazil has blocked illegal sites at scale before: the SPA reported more than 25,000 blocked in the first year of the licensed market, while the market it was protecting still existed. The difference now is that from 6 October there is no licensed alternative, and the banks and platforms carry the whole burden. The MJSP's own Telegram findings, of channels steering users to unlicensed and fake brands, show where displaced players are likely to be sent.

The early figures from both sides are advocacy as much as measurement. The number that will settle the argument, how much betting moves offshore once the licensed brands go dark, will not exist until after 6 October, and neither the government nor the industry has yet said how it will measure it.