When the Betting Law came into force in Brazil in January 2025, the country was seen by much of the industry as the iGaming “promised land”: a giant market to be explored, with a deeply rooted sports culture and, now, with clear rules.
A year and a half later, in a period marked by growing regulatory restrictions and recent statements by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva about eliminating the sector once and for all, is Brazil still that “promised land,” or does the original promise no longer describe the market that exists today?
staging-latam.next.io/ spoke with some of the biggest operators in the Brazilian sector to find out, including Sportingbet, Esportes da Sorte, EstrelaBet, Start Bet, Novibet and Superbet, as well as technology provider Cactus Gaming.
The original promise
An entire country to be explored, countless possibilities for revenue, investment and quick returns, and a huge public willing to bet.
That is how Brazil came to be described by the global iGaming industry. Overnight, it became the supposed breeding ground of global iGaming, and dozens of foreign companies saw in it the golden opportunity that was lacking in the already saturated markets of Europe and the United States.
Antonio Forjaz, head of Sportingbet in Latin America, sums up what was expected: that a large but informal market would become auditable, with clear rules. “In that specific respect, regulation delivered; Brazil became one of the largest markets in the world by volume,” he says.
“What wasn’t factored in was the speed at which the political and reputational agenda would move afterward.”
The numbers support this reading of scale: the market went from zero in January 2025 to 85 licensed operators, 25.2 million bettors and around US$7 billion in GGR in its first year of operation.
But were the R$30 million (US$5.9 million) licenses worth it? A year and a half later, the answer depends on who you ask.
Entain, Sportingbet’s parent company, went so far as to rank Brazil as its fastest-growing market outside the US.
Nikos Papadoglou, general manager of Novibet Group, reaffirms: “We believed, and we still believe, that Brazil has the potential to become one of the most relevant betting markets in the world.”
According to him, based on experience in other regulated markets: “Brazil would go through an initial period of rapid expansion, followed by a consolidation phase. In this second stage, the differentiator is no longer simply who can grow the fastest, but who can offer the most solid, secure and innovative product, with a consistent user experience.”
Marcela Campos, vice president and CFO of Grupo Esportes Gaming Brasil (operator of the Esportes da Sorte brand), takes a similar stance: “The initial optimism remains,” but today it is “accompanied by a much more mature reading.”
Fellipe Fraga, CBO and head of Institutional Relations at EstrelaBet, is more direct, arguing that “the thesis was clearly validated.”
Diego Bittencourt, COO of Start Bet, describes the current market as “more mature from an institutional standpoint, but more complex economically” than initially projected.
Three foreign operators
Among the major foreign brands consulted, three agreed to talk about their own trajectory in Brazil, each with a different story.
Sportingbet was already operating in Brazil before regulation, with a brand that fans had known for years.
Its strategy, according to Forjaz, was not to win through media volume, but to build presence over time, through clubs, competitions, broadcasts and content. “Capital buys presence, but not trust,” he says.
“If it were only about capital, the rankings would change every quarter according to who was investing the most. That’s not what we see.”
According to Blask data, Sportingbet currently ranks fourth in the country in Accumulated Brand Power, with a 6.53% share, a slight drop from its peak of 7.92% in October last year.
Superbet, meanwhile, is the brand that has grown the most among the country’s top 10 in brand strength, with a 7.14% share and an increase of nearly 79% compared to the previous year, the biggest leap among the market leaders. This month, it launched a new product, Linha Super, a 24-hour support service, by phone and WhatsApp, for people with gambling addiction.
“It’s not a campaign aimed at user acquisition or at any gain for the company as a brand,” said the operator’s CEO to the press.
Together, the country’s four largest brands, all of foreign origin, account for nearly half of the entire sector’s brand strength.
Novibet, founded in Greece in 2010, did not have the same prior brand recognition when entering Brazil, but bet on its own technology platform, an office in São Paulo, and a long-term partnership with Santos Futebol Clube.
General manager Papadoglou stated: “Our strategy has been to combine both sides: global technology and experience with local autonomy, knowledge, and execution.”
Brand strength is concentrated
If the four largest operators already concentrate nearly half of the country’s brand strength, the natural question is whether this gap between the leaders and the rest of the market will continue to widen or whether there is still room for new entrants to gain scale.
Forjaz acknowledges that market concentration “may increase in the short term, because fixed costs are high.”
Fraga gets straight to the point: “The gap between the top 10 or 12 and the rest tends to increase.”
Bittencourt offers a similar reading, saying that “the gap widened in the short term” and that “this effect feeds on itself.”
According to staging-latam.next.io/’s own market report, the five largest operators in the country already control between 45% and 70% of the entire Brazilian market, depending on the methodology used.
Papadoglou, in turn, argues that “concentration is a natural consequence of the maturation of a regulated market. As operational, technological, and financial requirements increase, companies need to demonstrate the capacity to sustain long-term investments.”
Esportes da Sorte, in turn, takes a different stance on this same phenomenon.
VP and CFO Campos describes consolidation as “a natural and inevitable movement,” adding that “Grupo EGB was structured precisely to lead this consolidation process in Brazil.”
The specter of the illegal market looms over the sector
Sources converge on the same point regarding what has been the biggest challenge since regulation: it’s not advertising, nor a possible reaction from the Supreme Federal Court, but the illegal market.
“What we underestimated was the persistence of the illegal market, which unfortunately represents a large share of the market,” says Forjaz.
Campos calls this “the competitive asymmetry created by the illegal market,” which, according to her, is the biggest challenge faced by the sector.
Estimates from the sector itself, including analyses that have already circulated among licensed operators, suggest that the illegal market still accounts for nearly half of all betting activity in Brazil, even after regulation.
Fraga describes a familiar cycle, already seen around the world: an illegal operator with no regulatory costs fuels negative public perception, which fuels political pressure, which generates more restrictions on the regulated sector, which pushes more bettors back to the illegal market.
Not all sources see the picture deteriorating, however. Victoria Cerioni, legal and compliance manager at Novibet in Brazil, cites the “Fora do Radar” (Off the Radar) study by LCA Consultores and Instituto Locomotiva.
This study, she argues, “points to a reduction in the estimated share of the illegal market compared to the previous survey. It’s an important sign of progress, but it also shows there is still work to be done.”
Advertising in dispute
The way the sector communicates with consumers has also changed since regulation, and there is disagreement over how the operators themselves label this change.
“There is no ban on betting advertising in Brazil,” says Forjaz. “What exists, since July, is a much more restricted regime.”
Campos uses an almost identical formulation: “It must be clarified that Brazil did not ban advertising; the country established a responsible and disciplined advertising environment.”
Bittencourt questions the practical effect of the recent changes, noting that even responsible gambling awareness campaigns have been banned from public spaces by some municipal governments: “What if, instead of banning it, we used the space to encourage responsible gambling?” she asks.
The new rules in effect since July include the mandatory use of phrases such as “Betting can cause addiction,” occupying at least 10% of advertising materials, as well as the launch of the Centralized Self-Exclusion Platform, which blocks access to all licensed platforms in the country at once.
Italy, by comparison, has banned nearly all betting advertising since 2018.
Papadoglou describes the same movement from another angle. According to him, the change “accelerated a transition that was already underway: competition is moving away from a volume-based advertising model toward a focus on product quality, relationship, and experience.”
The company cites as an example Noviverso, its points and loyalty program, and its proprietary Aposta Blindada feature, in addition to its partnership with Santos Futebol Clube.
According to Papadoglou, “brands that already had recognition, an established player base, and their own infrastructure depend less on paid advertising to maintain the relationship with their customers.”
Not everyone reads the fine print the same way
In August 2026, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) formed a provisional majority to maintain the ban on in-person gambling in the country, but Justice Flávio Dino requested more time to review the case and argued for extending the discussion to fixed-odds online betting, claiming that “betting is gambling.”
Lucas Andion, director at Cactus Gaming, explains that, so far, the case explicitly refers to the ban on in-person gambling and that “there is no final STF decision extending this conclusion to betting.”
Cerioni, from Novibet, makes the same distinction: “At this stage, this is not a decision about the Betting Law or about the regulated online sports betting market, which has its own legal framework,” he states, citing the federal license under which the company operates.
Campos prefers not to get into legal technicalities. “Legal debate is part of the consolidation of any new economic sector,” he says, focusing on what he describes as “absorbing external noise” through governance and fiscal transparency.
Big, national, small
Among the Brazilian operators consulted for this report, each occupies a different position in the market, and each relates differently to its own size.
Esportes da Sorte is building a “multi-brand architecture” designed, according to Campos, to lead the market consolidation process as it matures.
The group operates three brands under the same license, Esportes da Sorte, Onabet, and Lotus Bet, and accounts for about 3.9% of brand strength in the Blask ranking, the largest share among genuinely Brazilian operators.
Fraga, from EstrelaBet, reaffirms the validation of the original thesis without positioning the company as an active consolidator.
EstrelaBet, founded in Minas Gerais, currently holds about 2.12% of brand strength in the same ranking.
Start Bet, also from Minas Gerais and without a registered position among the country’s top 20 brands, describes itself as part of the “long tail of the regulated market: distant from the group of leaders in volume and market share, with a smaller-scale operation focused on efficiency, relationship-building, and sustainable growth.”
The chain behind the chain
Regulatory pressure does not only affect those who offer services directly to bettors; it is already beginning to reach those who build the infrastructure behind the operations.
According to Andion, “more than a divide between big and small operators,” the Brazilian market is “beginning to see a divide between more mature and less mature operations.”
Brazilian iGaming operations executive William Bonalume wrote that the next phase of regulation should extend from oversight of operators to the entire B2B chain (platforms, payments, KYC, data, and affiliates), under a logic of shared responsibility: whoever processes transactions or distributes games for an illegal operator also becomes subject to scrutiny.
SPA, the Brazilian regulator, has already held a public consultation on the topic and, in July, the government notified 37 fintechs suspected of processing funds linked to illegal betting, associated with 160 operators and more than 40,000 websites, according to data cited by Bonalume.
“Brazil isn’t just regulating operators, it’s regulating trust,” says the executive.
Five years ahead
The risk for the sector doesn’t come only from the Judiciary. Just weeks before the next general elections, Lula stated he will take “drastic” measures against betting operators, considering them “a harm to society.”
SPA’s regulatory agenda for 2026 and 2027 already includes a review of licensing procedures, new measures against illegal operators, and improvements to oversight mechanisms and bettor protection, but Lula’s statements show that uncertainty about the sector’s future is not only technical, it is also electoral, and much more alive than the slow process underway at the STF.
In this context, Esportes da Sorte envisions a “more consolidated market, with greater integration between regulation, the financial system, and oversight.”
Papadoglou projects a similar scenario: “Brazil will move toward a more consolidated market, with more mature consumers, clearer rules, and less room for operations that lack the structure to sustain long-term investments.”
Start Bet projects its continued presence through “governance, profitability, and trust,” without promising growth at any cost.
Consolidation accelerates as the market matures
Not everyone who bet early on Brazil has made it this far as independent operators.
Ana Gaming, for example, brought together three brands that previously competed separately, Bet7k, Cassino.bet and VeraBet, under a single licensed entity, a path that other smaller operators have also followed, whether voluntarily or not, as the cost of operating alone increased.
A year and a half later, there is no single answer to the initial question.
For those who arrived early and managed to build scale, Brazil delivered the promised volume, and more: a market that already ranks among the largest in the world for regulated betting.
For others, the promise turned into a merger, consolidation, or simply a smaller and more modest operation than what was imagined in 2025.
The “promised land” may have existed, but not in the same way for everyone who tried to conquer it.