Banning won't end the game

Brazil spent years debating how to regulate sports betting. Congress passed legislation, the government implemented regulations, companies paid to operate legally in the country, made investments, and began complying with oversight, taxation, and consumer protection rules.

You cannot create a rule, bring companies and institutions to make commitments based on it, and then overnight overturn the entire regulatory framework.

No regulation is untouchable. If problems exist, rules need to be refined. If they need to be stricter, they should be. Those who break the law must face penalties. But there is a fundamental difference between improving a regulatory framework and simply dismantling it.

This is a matter of legal certainty.

And legal certainty is not just an issue for betting companies. It matters to any person, company, or institution that invests, contracts, and makes long-term plans in Brazil relying on rules established by the State itself.

This change hits Brazilian sports head-on.

A decision of this magnitude affects professional football, youth categories, women's football, Olympic sports, and all competitions.

Brazilian sports cannot be analyzed solely through the financial reality of the highest-earning clubs. And it is not just the clubs that are affected—an entire chain faces immediate impact: direct and indirect jobs, media companies, marketing and technology firms, suppliers, arenas, service providers, and an entire economic ecosystem.

It also affects public revenue. The regulated market generates resources through taxation and allocations established by law, which flow to public coffers and are directed to areas of social interest.

Weakening the legal market could produce a particularly damaging combination: fewer resources for sports and lower tax revenue for the country.

Will Brazilians be better protected? Perhaps this is one of the central questions in this debate.

Banning legally operating companies does not mean ending betting. The game does not disappear, and the underground market—which already represents a significant portion of activity—will grow and fill that space.

A Locomotiva Institute survey conducted in May 2026 across the country with 2,291 bettors points to a relevant presence of practices associated with illegal markets. An LCA Consultores study, based on this research, estimates that between 38% and 44% of online betting value in Brazil currently occurs on illegal platforms.

There is one particularly important finding: the estimated share of the illegal market declined after regulation, falling from the 41% to 51% range in 2025 to 38% to 44% in the first half of 2026.

The game will not end with a stroke of the pen. What ends is the part Brazil can regulate, oversee, tax, and hold accountable.

And the result could be less security for investors, fewer resources for sports and the country, and reduced oversight capacity over betting activity.

Brazil must combat illegal gambling. It must protect its population.

But it also must preserve legal certainty, investment capacity, and the sustainability of its sports institutions.

Brazilian sports cannot be weakened by a decision that neither eliminates gambling, nor eliminates the illegal market, and still puts at risk the investments, jobs, and commitments built within the rules that the country itself established.