Blaze spent R$ 330 million on influencer marketing in 2025 as MPDFT files public civil action

Brazilian online casino platform Blaze recorded R$ 330 million in advertising spend between January and November 2025, including payments tied to Virginia Fonseca, Jon Vlogs, and Renato Garcia. The same period has now turned into a legal problem: the MPDFT (Ministério Público do Distrito Federal e Territórios) has filed a public civil action over alleged abusive practices and misleading advertising.

1. The spending figure comes from a company trial balance obtained by Folha de S.Paulo. It shows Blaze put serious money into promotion while the platform’s Brazil business reached R$ 1.9 billion in gross revenue over the period. That is three times the R$ 600 million estimate used by the MPDFT to calculate a potential R$ 120 million fine.
2. Player deposits during the same January-November window totaled about R$ 11 billion. For PSPs and acquirers, that is the number that matters operationally: the traffic was not just marketing noise, it translated into real funding volume at scale.
3. The lawsuit is being handled by the 1st Consumer Defense Prosecutor’s Office (Prodecon). Prosecutor Paulo Roberto Binicheski said the trigger was a Virginia Fonseca Instagram story during the 2026 World Cup, where she posted a bet on Cape Verde beating Argentina without clearly identifying it as advertising. He said she “induced people to bet on Cape Verde” and argued that companies must comply with the Consumer Defense Code regardless of what the Ministry of Finance says.
4. The filing describes the alleged conduct broadly, saying Blaze, “in coauthorship with Virginia Fonseca and other agents of its business ecosystem,” did not just commit isolated violations but built “a predatory engineering of exploitation of cognitive vulnerabilities at massive scale.” Prodecon said it obtained Virginia’s posts and internal marketing materials by infiltrating the company’s betting channels.
5. Blaze said it has not yet been formally served in the MPDFT case. In its statement, the company said its influencer partnerships are “in strict compliance with the legislation and regulations in force in the country” and added that it does not comment on contract clauses or amounts for reasons of commercial confidentiality.

The contract disclosure is the part that high-risk payment teams will notice first. Blaze’s trial balance shows R$ 6.4 million in contractual commitments to VF Digital, Virginia Fonseca’s company in Goiânia, of which R$ 2.77 million had already been paid and R$ 3.6 million remained outstanding. The same document lists a R$ 2.8 million obligation with Jon Vlogs, with the balance for Renato Garcia not included in the provided text.