Survey: 83.47% of social program beneficiaries in Greater São Paulo have never used betting platforms

A Cruz Consulting survey commissioned by the Associação Nacional de Jogos e Loterias (ANJL) says the overwhelming majority of social program beneficiaries in the São Paulo metropolitan area have never used sports betting platforms. For PSPs, the more operationally relevant detail is the leak to illegal sites: 20% of respondents who were removed from legal platforms, either by government block or self-exclusion, said they moved to clandestine bets.

1. The survey covered beneficiaries of federal government social programs across 39 cities in the Região Metropolitana de São Paulo and was fielded on September 3 and 4, with results published on Wednesday (9).
2. Among respondents, 83.47% said they have never used sports betting platforms. Another 12.63% said they had bet before but do not use the platforms now, while 3.9% said they still use bets.
3. Of those who had already bet, 5.49% said they had been blocked by the federal government and 21.97% said they had voluntarily requested self-exclusion from sports betting platforms.
4. The survey also found that 20% of respondents removed from legal platforms, whether by government block or by their own request, said they had migrated to illegal bets operating without authorization from the Ministry of Finance.
5. ANJL president Plínio Lemos Jorge said the findings support a data-led discussion of betting regulation and argue for pairing consumer-protection tools with ongoing action against clandestine platforms. The survey also found that for 68.1% of respondents, a presidential candidate’s position on authorizing bets would not change their vote.

For high-risk operators and their payment partners, the headline number is not the 83.47% on legal play. It is the 20% migration figure: if exclusion and blocking push users toward unlicensed sites, the enforcement problem does not disappear, it changes rails.