Review: iGaming Business unpacks Brazil's contested $12.5bn household gambling-loss study
2026-08-11
This is our review of reporting published by iGaming Business. We have not reproduced their article.
A review of iGaming Business's coverage of a Brazilian study estimating $12.5bn in household gambling losses in 2025, examining what the contested figures mean for regulation, enforcement and the unlicensed market.
iGaming Business has covered the third edition of the Fiscal Bulletin of Brazilian States, reporting that Brazilian households lost BRL62.5 billion ($12.5 billion) net to betting operators in 2025. The figure, derived from Central Bank Pix data, is significantly higher than the BRL36.9 billion recorded by the country's betting regulator, the SPA. The piece also flags an LCA Consultores study for IBJR estimating that between 41% and 51% of the Brazilian market operates without a licence.
What stands out is how the piece connects the fiscal gap to the illegal market. The authors of the Comsefaz study note that the difference between their estimate and the Ministry of Finance's is roughly 41% of the total - matching the lower end of LCA's unlicensed-market range. That convergence is circumstantial but important: it suggests official data on regulated channels may be understating the true scale of betting. The Pix-based methodology, which compares actual transfers to a counterfactual scenario, is novel, though the authors themselves caution the result is "not a proven cause-and-effect relationship."
The timing matters. Brazil is still calibrating its regulatory regime, and the study's finding that the Bolsa Família betting ban measurably slowed Pix transfer growth points to a significant low-income participant base. That has real consequences for social welfare policy and for the federal government's tax expectations. For operators, the unlicensed-market share estimate sharpens the question of how aggressively enforcement will target off-shore or unlicensed sites.
The discrepancy between state finance secretaries and the federal regulator is also a reminder that Brazilian betting data is contested territory. Future editions of this bulletin, and any response from the SPA, will be worth watching - not least because the Pix-based approach could become a template for other markets with instant-payment systems. iGaming Business has the full study details and analysis; read the original piece for the complete figures and methodology.