Brazil’s SUS expanded telehealth support to 100,000 bettors a month, but only 291 said whether they use legal or illegal sites

Brazil’s Ministry of Health has scaled up teleattendimento for people dealing with gambling-related problems, but the data it released is thin enough that it barely measures the size of the illegal market. For PSPs and gambling operators, the point is simple: the public system is already treating players regardless of whether the underlying platform is authorized.

1. The BNLData request, filed under Brazil’s LAI (Access to Information Law) via the Fala.BR platform, asked the Ministry of Health for monthly SUS telehealth data tied to sports betting and online gaming problems, with one goal: separate users of platforms authorized by the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas do Ministério da Fazenda (SPA-MF) from people using illegal sites.
2. The Ministry said the service had been expanded to up to 100,000 teleattendimentos per month, but only 291 people answered the question about whether the platform they bet on was authorized by the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Health did not say which period those figures cover.
3. Of those 291 answers, 109 people, or 37.5%, said they bet on unauthorized platforms; 99, or 34%, said they used platforms authorized by the SPA/MF; and 83, or 28.5%, said they did not know. In other words, more than a third of the people who turned to the public system for help were using market channels outside Brazil’s formal oversight, tax, or advertising-control framework.
4. The Ministry’s formal response said the question asked users: “As plataformas que você aposta são autorizadas pelo Ministério da Fazenda?” and that the answers were collected to map the profile of people seeking care. The sample is tiny, but the policy signal is not: the public health system is paying for treatment whether the gambling site is licensed or not.
5. BNLData also reported that in the first half of 2026, R$ 24.19 million was allocated by health authorities to the “Cuidado para Pessoas com Problemas Relacionados a Jogos de Apostas” program under the Ministry of Health. The teleattendimento service is remote, confidential, professionally supervised, also covers family members, and acts as an entry point to the Rede de Atenção Psicossocial (RAPS); it has been offered since March via the Meu SUS Digi app.

For high-risk operators, the useful detail here is less the psychology and more the plumbing: Brazil is already routing gambling-related cases into a public health channel, and the state is not conditioning care on whether the player came from an authorized or unauthorized site. That matters for liability discussions, responsible-gambling obligations, and the wider regulatory case for licensed versus offshore traffic.