Brazil bans fixed-odds betting, and IBIA warns of an immediate hit to match-fixing monitoring

A Provisional Measure published on Thursday, 25/9, banned fixed-odds betting in Brazil, and the International Betting Integrity Association says that effectively pulled the plug on the country’s sports integrity monitoring setup. For licensed operators and payment providers, the immediate concern is not just regulatory whiplash — it is the reported migration of betting volume to unlicensed sites and the loss of structured reporting.

1. The warning comes from a technical report by IBIA, the global nonprofit funded by more than 90 licensed operators. The group says it monitors more than 1.5 million sporting events a year, so when it talks about data loss, it is talking about a system built to see patterns, not a press release with strong feelings.
2. According to IBIA, ending federal authorisations and interrupting the regulated model removes the oversight tools coordinated by the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas do Ministério da Fazenda (SPA/MF). The association describes this as an “apagão de dados” — a data blackout — at the moment when Brazil’s integrity ecosystem had reached its highest level of diagnostic precision.
3. The report also says the ban does not eliminate betting demand. Using projections from H2 Gambling Capital, IBIA estimates that about R$ 25 billion in betting volume will move to illegal, unlicensed platforms.
4. IBIA says the rise in suspicious betting alerts in 2025 did not mean more corruption; it reflected better detection under the licensed framework. In the unregulated period between 2021 and 2024, Brazil averaged 11 alerts per year: 11 in 2021, 14 in 2022, 11 in 2023, and 7 in 2024. In the first year of licensed operation, with mandatory facial-recognition KYC (know your customer) checks, compulsory reporting of suspicions to the SPA/MF, and integration with international monitoring bodies, that number rose to 25.
5. Football accounted for 51 of the 68 alerts recorded in Brazil from 2021 to 2025. The remaining alerts were spread across basketball, tennis, futsal, snooker, table tennis, volleyball, and beach volleyball, with 6 alerts each for basketball and tennis, and 1 each for futsal, snooker, table tennis, volleyball, and beach volleyball.

For high-risk PSPs, the practical takeaway is straightforward: when a market moves from regulated reporting to an illegal channel, you lose visibility, and the transaction flow does not disappear — it relocates. That changes both fraud screening and partner-risk calculations.