IBJR challenges ABRAS claims linking betting restrictions to food sales
Regulation3 min read
In brief
- Brazil's IBJR says ABRAS figures do not prove that banning sports betting raised food purchases.
- IBJR says food retail sales rose 7.9% in the week of 14–20 September, before the restriction took effect.
- IBJR puts regulated betting GGR at about R$37bn in 2025, around 0.46% of household consumption.
- IBJR questions the R$143bn and R$62.5bn figures and asks for their methods to be clarified.
The Brazilian Institute for Responsible Gaming (IBJR) said on 29 October that figures published by the Brazilian Supermarket Association (ABRAS) do not establish a link between the prohibition of sports betting and an increase in food purchases recorded in October. In a statement, the institute said that isolating variables such as income, employment, prices and the resources available to households would be necessary to establish such a connection, and that those factors affect consumption independently of the provisional measure that restricted sports betting.
The IBJR based its response on ABRAS's own weekly monitoring carried out with NIQ, which it said showed nominal food retail sales already rising before the measure took effect: growth of 7.9% in the week of 14 to 20 September, when the prohibition was not yet in force, and of 7.4% between 5 and 11 October, compared with the same weeks of 2025. The institute also noted that in an earlier analysis referring to August, ABRAS itself attributed the expansion of consumption to improved employment, higher income and falling food prices, with a real increase of 2.71% in households in the year to date. According to the IBJR, those elements predate the prohibition and must be separated from any effects attributed to the measure.
The IBJR said the fall in the volume of transactions via PIX also does not support the argument that money moved from betting to supermarkets. It said the gross number of transfers does not show how much households stopped betting, where the money that circulated on platforms went, or to what extent betting continued on clandestine sites.
The statement also questioned the origin of two figures that it said have featured in public debate: R$143bn that betting would have taken from commerce and R$62.5bn taken from household income. The IBJR contrasted them with data from the Ministry of Finance and IBGE. It said the regulated betting market recorded about R$37bn in GGR in 2025, calculated as total stakes minus prizes paid, while household consumption in the same period totalled approximately R$8.1tn, according to IBGE, meaning GGR corresponded to about 0.46% of that consumption.
According to the IBJR, the R$62.5bn figure derives from an estimate built from PIX transfers without the methodology distinguishing authorised operators from illegal platforms, while the R$143bn represents a projection of sales that commerce would have failed to capture because of betting, not the effective spending of bettors in the regulated market. The institute concluded that neither value equals the real outlay of bettors on licensed platforms and asked that methods, periods and market segments considered in each estimate be clarified before any conclusion about the sector is drawn. It said the absence of that information prevents the numbers from serving as evidence of the causal relationship that ABRAS suggests.