Bet Legal recorded 710 illegal betting sites launched in Brazil within two days of the gambling ban announcement. By Friday evening, when President Lula signed the provisional measure banning online betting, the platform had identified 295 unauthorised domains. Another 294 sites appeared on Saturday alone. By Sunday evening the count reached 710, a 141% increase.
Monitoring is conducted jointly with Iron Security, a cybersecurity firm. The system cross-references data from official registers, notifications from telecoms regulator Anatel, and checks technical parameters including SSL protocols, domain ownership and connectivity.
From the start of the year through 22 September, the Secretariat for Prizes and Betting submitted 57,691 addresses to Anatel for blocking. Those figures do not equal the number of operators: a single operator can run dozens of variations of one domain. After the provisional measure took effect, the government blocked 506 illegal sites plus 43 Telegram channels and groups with a combined audience exceeding 212,000.
The National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) said the ban will not eliminate the illegal market. ANJL president Plínio Lemos Jorge noted that underground sites are expanding their offer and remain outside regulatory oversight, and will now exploit the ban on legal betting to pull players across. ANJL estimates the government will lose billions in tax revenue and push more than 30 million bettors into the grey zone.
The ministries of Justice and Finance are working with other agencies to block access to underground platforms and prevent new sites from entering the market.
