Brazil saw 294 illegal betting sites created in one day after Lula’s gambling ban

Brazil’s Provisional Measure 1,394 did not just tighten the market — it seems to have kicked off a fresh wave of unauthorised betting domains. Bet Legal says it identified 710 illegal sites by 7:10pm on Sunday, up from 295 at 6pm on Friday, which matters for PSPs and acquirers because enforcement pressure is now running in parallel with rapid domain churn.

1. Bet Legal said it detected 415 new illegal betting sites after the publication of Provisional Measure 1,394, which prohibited gambling in Brazil. As of 6pm on Friday, when Lula announced the online betting ban, 295 unauthorised domains had already been identified.
2. On Saturday alone, 294 illegal sites were created. By 7:10pm on Sunday, the total had reached 710, which the platform described as a 141% increase in two days. For payment providers, that is the usual problem in this market: the domain count moves faster than the clean-up process.
3. The Bet Legal survey is run in partnership with Iron Security, a cybersecurity and AI company. The system cross-references the Official Gazette of the Union, state gazettes and notifications sent to Anatel, the Brazilian telecommunications regulatory agency, then runs technical checks on connectivity, secure protocols and record ownership.
4. According to the platform, the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets forwarded 57,691 addresses to Anatel for restriction between 1 January and 22 September, according to Poder360. The figures do not necessarily map to a single operator, since one company can run dozens of variations of the same domain.
5. The National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) said prohibition does not eliminate the illegal market. ANJL President Plínio Lemos Jorge said clandestine sites will use the ban on legal betting to pull bettors into the illegal market. The association also said the government has pushed more than 30 million bettors into illegal gambling.

The government said it took down 506 illegal gambling websites after Provisional Measure 1,394 was enacted, through action by the Ministries of Justice and Finance. It also identified 43 Telegram channels and groups promoting illegal betting, with more than 212,000 members combined.