Self-Exclusion in Brazil Only Exists in the Regulated Betting Market, New LAI Data Show

Data obtained via Brazil’s Access to Information Law (LAI) from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health points to the same basic split: regulated betting can block a player, unregulated betting cannot. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks looking at Brazil, that is the practical line between a market that can monitor risk and one that eventually sends the cost to the public health system.

1. The Ministry of Health has been asking patients in telehealth appointments whether the platform they use is authorized by the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas (SPA/MF). Between 25 February 2026 and 27 August 2026, it recorded 291 answers, even though the service has capacity for up to 100,000 telehealth appointments per month.
2. Among those responses, users of illegal betting sites accounted for 37.5%, ahead of users of authorized operators at 34.0%. That is the awkward part for anyone still pretending the problem is contained inside the licensed market: a meaningful share of cases reaching the public health system comes from outside the regulated perimeter.
3. The Ministry of Finance also detailed the reasons given by users of the Plataforma Centralizada de Autoexclusão, a tool that blocks a bettor’s CPF across all operators authorized by the SPA/MF. The platform was created by the SPA and made available in December 2025.
4. The Ministry said the platform had 1,214,252 recorded responses and that this figure equals 3% of the 40 million active CPFs registered in the Sistema de Gestão de Apostas (Sigap). In other words, the self-exclusion tool has already been used at scale rather than as a niche compliance feature nobody touches.
5. Of those responses, reasons that clearly point to a gambling problem — loss of control (mental health), financial difficulties, and professional health advice — total 49.42%. The other 50.58% are users who self-excluded as a precaution, because they were concerned about how operators might use their data, or who chose not to disclose a reason.

For high-risk operators and payment providers, the policy signal is plain: regulated betting in Brazil comes with a measurable player-protection layer, while offshore or illegal sites do not offer self-exclusion, data blocking, or a usable record. If the player later turns up in the public health system, the cost is no longer sitting with the operator.