IBJR Says a Ban on Fixed-Odds Betting Could Put R$ 73 Billion in Revenue at Risk and Worsen Legal Uncertainty in Brazil

The Instituto Brasileiro de Jogo Responsável (IBJR) argues that a total ban on fixed-odds betting would break Brazil’s own regulatory framework just as the market has been brought under federal authorization, supervision, and rules since January 2025. For PSPs and operators, the real issue is simple: if legal rails disappear, the volume does not disappear with them — it moves to the unregulated side.

1. The IBJR and its members say the proposed prohibition would undo a regime built by the Brazilian state itself. According to the group, companies have already invested, hired staff, built systems, signed contracts, and paid license fees to comply with the rules that took effect in January 2025.
2. A study by LCA Consultores, using data from Instituto Locomotiva, estimates that 38% to 44% of online bets are still placed on clandestine platforms, down from an estimated 41% to 51% in 2025. In other words, the legal market is not the whole market, and shutting the legal one is a neat way to hand share to illegal operators that do not face the same obligations.
3. The study also says that moving activity out of the regulated environment would remove consumer protections such as identification, facial recognition, limits, transaction monitoring, self-exclusion, and other Responsible Gambling tools. It would also strip the state of monitoring and transaction-tracing capabilities tied to the regulated payment flow.
4. On the fiscal side, LCA estimates that between 2027 and 2030, banning all fixed-odds betting could put R$ 58 billion to R$ 73 billion in tax revenue at risk, assuming 80% to 100% of current regulated demand migrates to illegal operators. The money in question is earmarked by law for areas including public security, education, social security, tourism, and sport.
5. The legal exposure is not trivial either. Authorized companies paid R$ 30 million in license fees, valid for five years, and structured their operations around approvals granted by the government. Based only on those fees, LCA calculates that the federal government’s legal risk starts at at least R$ 2.55 billion, excluding investments, contracts, and other obligations already assumed by the companies.

For high-risk payments players, the takeaway is less about gambling policy in the abstract and more about market structure: when a regulated betting channel is reversed shortly after launch, payment monitoring, KYC, fraud controls, and tax collection all move in the wrong direction at once. Brazil is showing what that looks like in numbers.