Brazil’s licensed betting market took R$ 220.6 billion in deposits in 2025, Ministry of Finance says

Brazil’s Ministry of Finance has, for the first time, published preliminary 2025 betting data, and the number that matters for PSPs is this: authorized operators received R$ 220.6 billion in deposits. The gap versus earlier estimates is large enough to change how people talk about market size, payment flows, and how much of the activity sits outside the licensed perimeter.

1. The Ministry of Finance said federally authorized bets received R$ 220.6 billion in deposits during 2025, according to data obtained by Folha de S.Paulo via Brazil’s access-to-information law. Of that total, R$ 36.9 billion became revenue for betting houses, matching the negative balance accumulated by players over the period.
2. The official figure is R$ 130 billion below the estimate released in July by Comsefaz, the National Committee of Finance Secretaries. Comsefaz had calculated R$ 350.97 billion in Pix transfers to the sector and a R$ 62.5 billion loss for Brazilian families. That gap is now being used to argue over how much of the market is actually flowing through licensed operators versus clandestine sites.
3. This is the first time the Ministry has released this type of data, and it is still preliminary. The Secretariat of Prizes and Betting, which sits under the Ministry, said the numbers can be revised until verification and consolidation procedures are finished.
4. On paper, betting houses kept 16.7% of deposits as revenue, above the 15% maximum retention allowed by law and well above the 7% rate declared by the sector itself. The remaining R$ 183.7 billion went to prize payouts and cashable bonuses, which players can withdraw at any time and which operators deduct from revenue in accounting terms.
5. Under the current rules, 88% of gross revenue stays with the bets, while the other 12% is split between the federal government and entities benefiting from the regulation, including charitable groups. That share rises to 13% in 2026 and reaches 15% in 2028. Federal, state, and municipal taxes still apply on top of company revenue. Folha’s review of company filings, including Blaze’s, points to profit margins around 30%, a level comparable to BTG Pactual.

For PSPs and acquirers, the useful detail is the monthly activity profile: an average of 9.25 million Brazilians placed bets each month in 2025, and October was the busiest month, with deposits peaking and the number of bettors reaching 10.82 million. Across the full year, 25 million Brazilians placed at least one bet. The concentration lines up with the final stretch of the Campeonato Brasileiro and the knockout rounds of the Sul-Americana and Libertadores, which is the kind of seasonality payment teams need to plan around.