What China’s betting ban reveals for Brazil

As Lula’s government discusses new restrictions on betting, China offers a simple but uncomfortable lesson: when legal supply is squeezed, demand does not vanish. It moves to offshore and clandestine operators, which is exactly the problem high-risk PSPs and acquirers know too well.

1. Brazil is reportedly discussing a Provisional Measure with new betting restrictions, including a possible ban on online casinos. The point of the China comparison is not that Brazil will copy the same outcome, but that restricting legal access does not automatically eliminate demand.
2. In mainland China, gambling has been prohibited for more than 75 years, with the exception of state lotteries. In 2020, the law was tightened further to criminalize organizing activities designed to attract Chinese citizens to gamble abroad.
3. The scale is large enough to matter. In 2025, official Chinese lotteries generated 627.97 billion yuan, including 419.39 billion yuan from sports lottery and 208.58 billion yuan from welfare lottery. In the same period, a 2020 estimate from a senior official at China’s Ministry of Public Security said about 1 trillion yuan a year was leaving the country in gambling-related money tied to overseas betting, equal to US$145 billion at the time. The figures come from different periods and methodologies, so they are not directly comparable.
4. That demand moved offshore. Operators set up in Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Money circulated through cryptocurrencies, third-party accounts, and clandestine payment structures. One operation identified in the Philippines was said to have handled 725.5 billion yuan, about US$100.8 billion, with more than 50,000 Chinese agents and nearly 1 million registered bettors. Authorities in both countries investigated the operation.
5. The practical risk of pushing players into illegal markets is straightforward: no deposit limits, no self-exclusion, no age verification, and no official complaint channels. In other words, the player loses the formal tools to challenge abusive activity or recover funds, and debts can spill over to families.

The report also says part of this ecosystem evolved into more complex criminal structures, which is the part payment teams usually care about first: once betting flows leave regulated rails, they do not disappear, they become harder to monitor and a lot easier to launder.