Ranking dos Políticos survey points to enforcement, legal offerings, and payment controls as decisive factors; study released on the eve of the STF hearing on MP 1,394
Banning online betting in China, India, and Indonesia led bettors to foreign and illegal sites. In Norway, with legal offerings and payment controls, 88% of revenue stayed in the licensed market, the study shows.
The survey “Online betting ban: actions and consequences in countries that adopted the model,” by Ranking dos Políticos, analyzes China, Indonesia, Thailand, India, the Philippines, Cambodia, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and Australia.
The 28-page document was produced by public policy specialist Daniel Galvêas and reviewed by Luan Sperandio, the organization’s director of operations. The text is described as descriptive.
Ranking dos Políticos presents itself as non-partisan and has evaluated lawmakers’ performance since 2011. According to Folha de S.Paulo, which published the survey on Sunday (the 1st), the document does not state whether it received outside funding.
Total ban
In the four countries with a total ban, demand persisted. In China, where gambling has been banned since 1949, about US$145 billion left the country illegally in 2020 for bets abroad, according to an estimate cited by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
In Indonesia, 12.3 million people made deposits on online gambling sites in 2025. In Thailand, the illegal gambling economy is estimated at 1.1 trillion baht per year, or 5.9% of GDP.
India is the most recent case. In August 2025, a national law banned real-money online gaming, and the formal domestic market practically disappeared. About one in three users switched to foreign platforms.
“Among the findings, it’s worth noting that prohibition reduces legal offerings but doesn’t eliminate demand, which migrates to foreign and clandestine sites,” Sperandio told Folha.
Legal offerings and payments
The study points to three factors to explain the differences between countries: the state’s enforcement capacity, the existence of an attractive legal offering, and control over payment methods.
Norway restricts the market to a state-owned company and a foundation and, since 2010, has banned intermediating payments to unlicensed operators. In 2023, about 88% of revenue stayed in the regulated market.
The problems are concentrated outside it: in 62% of first calls to the online casino help line, the player used only unlicensed operators.
The survey also records harms from liberalization. Research in the United States links the legalization of sports betting to less savings and more debt and bankruptcies.
In Brazil, a study by StoneCo with Insper indicates that starting to bet raised default rates by about 14%, with an effect 2.6 times greater among bettors aged 18 to 24 than among those aged 45 or older.
In its conclusion, the document states that it is not possible to point to a clearly superior model, and that the effects of the ban in Brazil cannot yet be measured.
The Brazilian case
According to the study, 25.2 million Brazilians bet on the regulated market in 2025, with 79 authorized operators and gross revenue of R$37 billion. Even under regulation, the illegal share was estimated at between 41% and 51% of the market.
The report “Brazil: The Cost of Prohibition,” published in October by the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), uses estimates from market intelligence firm H2 Gambling Capital.
According to the calculations, about 60% of spending in the legal market, close to R$25 billion, will continue to be bet on unlicensed sites, and the illegal market would jump from R$17 billion to R$42 billion.
The bases vary: the Ranking dos Políticos study cites an estimate commissioned by an industry entity that places the 2025 illegal market between R$26 billion and R$40 billion.
Data from Blask show that the share of offshore sites in betting demand, as measured by searches, rose from 3.4% on the eve of the MP to 9.9% four days later, the highest level since regulation began.
The figures were cited by lawyers Gustavo Delbin and Mariana Chamelete in an article published on Monday (the 2nd) in Poder360.
STF and Congress
Justice Luiz Fux, of the Federal Supreme Court, held a public hearing on Tuesday (3), with no decision-making character, regarding the lawsuit filed by the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) against the MP.
At the request of the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), Fux expanded the number of participants from 28 to 34, including the Ministries of Health and Justice.
In Congress, the joint committee analyzing the measure has not yet been established, and the final deadline for voting is March 5.