Bets: if legal advertising is banned, the illegal market wins

Brazil’s Congress is moving fast on bills that would restrict commercial communications for fixed-odds betting — and some of them go further, trying to ban the sector outright. That matters for high-risk PSPs because the government’s own response has been aimed not at licensed operators, but at illegal ones and the money behind them.

1. On June 17, the Ministry of Finance issued Portaria MF 1.766, making payment methods and advertisers jointly liable for taxes owed by operators that are active without authorization. Two days later, on June 19, the president signed a decree authorizing the preventive blocking of funds belonging to clandestine betting houses, with the money later routed to the Fundo Nacional de Segurança Pública, using tools from the anti-faction law.
2. According to the Ministry of Finance, Brazil has already blocked about 50,000 illegal sites, identified 350 operators, and flagged 37 financial institutions suspected of moving irregular funds. In other words, the state has already mapped the operational side of the illegal market — and the payment layer is clearly part of that map.
3. The core argument against banning legal advertising is mechanical, not moral: if licensed operators cannot advertise, bettors do not disappear, they drift back to the unlicensed market. And that is exactly the market the decree and the finance ministry order are trying to squeeze.
4. In May 2026, the Tribunal de Contas da União, through minister Jorge Oliveira, said that between 40% and 51% of Brazil’s bets market was still operating outside Lei 14.790/2023, with estimated annual turnover of R$ 40 billion. That parallel market does not pay taxes, does not follow responsible gaming obligations, does not report suspicious transactions to Coaf, is not subject to LGPD, and is also outside Anexo X do Conar.
5. The TCU also described that illegal segment as fertile ground for money laundering, tax evasion, consumer fraud, match manipulation, and capture by criminal organizations. For PSPs, acquiring teams, and bank partners, the point is simple: if the legal market is pushed into the shadows, the most compliant operators lose traffic while the less compliant ones keep the demand.

The thing is, Brazil’s own policy mix already answers the real question. The government has gone after illegal betting, blocked sites, targeted funds, and named financial institutions. Banning advertising for licensed operators would run in the opposite direction — and payment providers tend to notice when public policy starts sending volume back to the black market.