Brazil enters the 2026 World Cup with 85 betting licenses and 187 authorized sites

Three World Cups are enough to show how fast Brazil’s betting market went from gray-zone activity to a regulated industry. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks, the important part is not the football — it is that 2026 is the first World Cup in Brazil with officially licensed betting operators, while illegal activity is still very much part of the picture.

1. In 2018, then-president Michel Temer signed Law 13.756, which authorized fixed-odds sports betting in Brazil. At the time, the market already existed offline and without oversight, so consumers had no government protection and operators had only the vague, personal obligation of “responsible gaming.”
2. Regulation moved further after 2023 with Law 14.790, but Cristiano Costa, psychologist and knowledge director at the Empresa Brasileira de Apoio ao Compulsivo (EBAC), says regulation alone does not solve the structural problem while half of the market still operates illegally and 78% of bettors cannot distinguish legal from illegal sites, at minimum by checking whether they end in .BET.BR.
3. The Qatar World Cup in 2022 became a major event for betting platforms in Brazil, outperforming Copa Libertadores and Champions League finals in audience. The market generated around R$9.8 billion in Brazil and US$35 billion globally, 65% more than the World Cup in Russia four years earlier. Sports betting handle in Brazil rose by more than 1,300%.
4. In 2026, Brazil is at a different point entirely: it is competing in a World Cup for the first time with a formally regulated betting market. The Ministry of Finance has granted 85 licenses, and 187 sites are authorized to operate.
5. Before the final stage of the tournament, the numbers are already large. A survey by Creditas, in partnership with Opinion Box, found that 56% of Brazilians plan to bet during the 2026 World Cup. H2 Gambling Capital estimates that Brazilians may deposit between R$ 20 billion and R$ 25 billion on platforms during the tournament, while the global market could reach US$ 60 billion, more than 50% above the previous record.

For high-risk payment providers, Brazil’s message is pretty simple: the market is now regulated, the licensed population is visible, and demand is large enough to attract both compliant volume and a substantial illegal tail. That is the kind of environment where payment routing, merchant onboarding, and gray-market exposure matter more than slogans.