IBJR identifies 60,477 suspected betting addresses in Brazil

The Brazilian Responsible Gambling Institute (IBJR) said its monitoring had identified 60,477 addresses suspected of offering betting since it began tracking them after betting was prohibited in Brazil. In 34,134 of those sites, the institute's LegitBet system found elements characteristic of betting operations, such as bonus offers, Pix payments and registration forms, according to the institute. The data was updated to Tuesday 27 October.

The IBJR said the figures represent entries in the LegitBet monitoring database and not necessarily the creation of new sites. Confirmation by the tool indicates the presence of the elements searched for and does not replace the authorities' analysis of each page, the institute said. The survey covered suspected pages during the period of Medida Provisória 1.394/2026, which prohibited the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting in the country, including sports betting and online games offered by companies based abroad to people in Brazil. Sites and applications for such betting were due to become unavailable from 6 October under a schedule published by the Ministry of Finance.

Companies in the sector report misuse of their brands to draw bettors to other platforms, including copies of operators' visual identity and posts that mention known companies but direct users to different services. Carlos Lima, chief executive of the IBJR, which represents betting companies, said sites imitate the visual identity of operators such as Betano, Novibet, Bet365 and BetMGM. BetMGM's press office reported a case in which a page uses the company's name as a gateway to another platform, with clicks redirecting visitors to a site advertising a 500% bonus on the first four deposits, according to material sent to the report. The address identified as an imitation is not an official BetMGM channel, and the company also points to posts on third-party pages that use its name and those of other operators to attract readers, with links directing the public to other betting houses.

On Tuesday 27 October alone, 436 suspected addresses entered the LegitBet database, of which 231 had their characteristics confirmed by the tool, the IBJR said. On the same date, the system recorded 374 suspected links in the monitored channels, an indicator that measures the circulation of links regardless of the identification of new sites. The monitoring uses internet searches, recent domain registrations, networks of pages already followed, Telegram channels and social networks, and also identifies addresses with similar names differentiated by numbers, letters or endings.

Lima said clandestine betting sites continue to advertise on social networks such as Instagram and to circulate such schemes through messaging applications, taking the public to pages that do not offer the same security guarantees as licensed operators. The data allows the presence of suspected pages during the prohibition to be mapped, but is not sufficient on its own to measure the effect of the provisional measure on the size of the clandestine market, betting volume or the occurrence of fraud, according to the institute. The IBJR advocates a return to a regulated market; Lima said that with regulated platforms offline it became harder for consumers to tell a genuine channel from an imitation, and that the prohibition removed supervised companies but did not stop the circulation of offers. He also asked authorities to investigate those responsible, remove fraudulent advertisements and sites and interrupt the payments that sustain these operations.