Brazil poll shows broad support for banning bets and online casinos, but the policy question is what replaces them

Two recent surveys suggest most Brazilians back a ban on bets and online casinos: 52% in a PoderData/Aya poll approved Lula’s move to prohibit all bets in Brazil, while a Datafolha study released on October 1 found 78% in favor of banning bets and online casinos. For high-risk PSPs, the useful part is not the headline number; it is the gap between public perception and what actually changes behavior, including whether activity moves to licensed or illegal channels.

1. André Gelfi argues that public support for a ban should not be read as a completed policy analysis. The article uses a simple analogy: if a building is on fire, people may agree the fire should be stopped, but that does not answer whether the right response is to demolish the building. In practice, the same split applies to gambling regulation.
2. The concerns are familiar to anyone selling payments into this vertical: advertising, financial losses, debt, access by minors, and family protection. Gelfi’s point is that these are real issues, but the policy question is which tools actually address them. He lists financial limits, advertising restrictions, self-exclusion, monitoring of risky behavior, and action against illegal operators as possible parts of a protection policy.
3. The Datafolha numbers add an important detail for operators and PSPs. According to the survey, 81% of respondents said they did not gamble and did not live with someone who gambled before the ban, while 9% said they gambled personally. That does not invalidate the result; it does suggest the response is largely a social perception, not direct user experience.
4. Another survey, from Indexa/Broadcast, found 70% support for a ban, while 21% wanted betting to continue under stricter rules. That split matters because the market outcome is not binary: a tougher regulated framework can mean one thing for licensed operators and something very different for the black market.
5. The international reference points are about measurement, not ideology. In the United Kingdom, the Gambling Commission tracks player behavior and negative outcomes. In the Netherlands, the regulator monitors channeling, meaning the share of activity that stays in the legal market. In 2026, it estimated that 91% of players used licensed operators, but only 53% of money lost stayed there. Sweden uses the same kind of indicator to track activity under state control.

The piece’s core warning for Brazil is straightforward: if regulators tighten or ban one side of the market, the real question is how much volume disappears and how much simply migrates to illegal platforms. That is the number PSPs, acquirers, and banking partners will care about, because the payments risk does not vanish just because the legal wrapper changes.