Brazil’s communications office cites R$62bn in 2025 betting losses

Brazil's Presidential Communications Secretariat (Secom) published material on Instagram arguing for a ban on betting, according to a report. The report says the material's claim that Brazilian families lost R$62bn on betting in 2025 is incorrect, and that the official figure from the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting of the Ministry of Finance (SPA-MF) is R$36.9bn in gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the regulated market in 2025.

The report also disputes the material's claim that bettors always lost. It says Finance Ministry data show companies received R$220.6bn in deposits in 2025 and returned R$183.7bn to bettors in prizes and withdrawable bonuses, meaning 83% of deposits went back to bettors.

On the material's claim that 69% of bettors had more losses than gains and 40% took on new debt because of betting, the report says no official source is given. It says the percentages match a Procon-SP opinion survey in which 68.73% reported accumulating more losses than gains and 39.7% said they had gone into debt after starting to use the platforms, based on 2,724 consumers surveyed between December 2025 and January 2026. The report says the survey is self-declared, that the sample may be self-selected because the questionnaire was published on Procon-SP's website and social media, and that the material turns correlation into causation.

The report describes as unsupported the material's claim that R$143bn failed to reach retail between January 2023 and March 2026. It says the figure comes from the National Confederation of Commerce (CNC), which used the Consumer Indebtedness and Default Survey (PEIC) and a statistical differences-in-differences model, making it an estimate rather than a measured figure. The report says 24 of the 39 months covered predate regulation, which began on 1 January 2025, and that the R$143bn over 39 months equals R$3.7bn per month, more than the entire GGR of the regulated market. It adds that retail grew 4.7% in 2024, according to IBGE, the same year the CNC points to a R$103bn loss.

The report says the government collected R$9.95bn from betting companies in 2025, equal to 27% of all GGR. Of that, it says, the 12% contribution on GGR, about R$4.4bn, went to legal beneficiaries: sport, tourism, public security, education, social security and health, with the remainder federal taxes such as IRPJ, CSLL, PIS and Cofins. The report says the material omits that these transfers reach sport, public security, health and education under Law 14.790, as well as football clubs, broadcasters and workers in the sector, and that a ban would end these resources while bettors move to illegal sites that pay no tax.

The report says three of the material's nine cards are correct, the ones stating that betting is entertainment rather than income or investment. It says the figures used to justify a ban come from estimates, statistical models and opinion surveys rather than from the SPA-MF, the government body that holds the official market data.