Brazilian households lost BRL62.5 billion to betting in 2025, study finds

A new analysis says Brazilian households lost BRL62.5 billion ($12.5 billion) to betting operators in 2025, while those operators handled BRL350.97 billion in Pix transactions. For PSPs and acquirers, the interesting bit is not just the size of the flow, but the report’s suggestion that a large share of the market still sits outside the licensed perimeter.

1. The figures come from the third edition of the Fiscal Bulletin of Brazilian States, prepared by Comsefaz (National Committee of Secretaries of Finance) in partnership with the Celso Furtado International Center for Development Policy. The study used Central Bank data, EPAE (Statistics on Payments by Economic Activity), and the authors’ own calculations.
2. Comsefaz said the BRL62.5 billion figure is the net transaction value, meaning money wagered minus winnings paid back. The report puts that amount at about 0.68% of the gross disposable income of Brazilian households, which is the kind of number that turns betting from a payments flow into a household balance-sheet issue.
3. The same report says the BRL62.5 billion estimate is BRL25.6 billion higher than the Ministry of Finance’s BRL36.9 billion estimate. That gap is roughly 41% of the total estimated in the report, and it lines up with the lower end of a separate LCA Consultores estimate that 41% to 51% of the Brazilian betting market is unlicensed.
4. LCA Consultores, a São Paulo-based market intelligence firm, prepared that estimate for the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR). The report’s implication is straightforward: if that much activity is still underground, licensed operators and payment providers are not seeing the full market, and compliance teams are left trying to separate legal betting traffic from illicit flows.
5. The report also says regulated betting operators coincided with a structural shift in Pix transfers from individuals to businesses in the arts, culture, sports and recreation sectors. Researchers looked at the period from October 2024 to March 2026, compared observed transfers with a counterfactual projection, and treated the difference as the impact attributable to betting operators.

The authors were careful on one point that payments people will care about: this was a statistical simulation, not proof of cause and effect. They also said the ban on betting for Bolsa Família beneficiaries slowed transaction growth and brought estimated transfer volumes closer to observed volumes. In other words, regulation is already showing up in the data, even if the spreadsheet is not pretending to be a court judgment.