Almost 700 new illegal bets appear in Brazil after government ban

In Brazil, the Independent Observatory that monitors the betting market found the appearance of almost 700 new illegal bets since Friday (25), when the government banned these bets in the country.

Shortly after the government announced the provisional measure banning betting, the Bet Legal platform identified 58 new unauthorized betting sites. On Saturday (26), another 334. By early Tuesday evening (29), the total reached almost 700 illegal betting pages.

Online betting has been banned since last Friday (25) - almost three years after the government regulated the operation of the sector in the country. Bets that operated with authorization may remain available until October 5th, only for bettors to redeem their account balance. After the deadline, the websites and applications are completely offline.

The government says it has set up a task force to monitor. The Ministry of Justice presented the first balance: it requested the blocking of more than 5,200 illegal websites and notified two virtual stores to remove 186 betting applications from the air by October 5th. The government identified 390 social media pages and profiles advertising illegal betting and asked for the content to be removed.

Almost 700 illegal bets were created after the ban announced by the government, according to a survey — Photo: Jornal Nacional/ Reproduction

The provisional measure prohibited the financial system from processing transactions intended for betting. The government hopes that the new rules will make it possible to trace the path of money moved through the illegal market.

"We did not have legal instruments to go after the money. The MP brought obligations to financial institutions. The Central Bank has already regulated two resolutions and these resolutions allow us to go after where the money goes", says Chico Lucas, national secretary of Public Security.

In a statement, the National Gaming and Lottery Association criticized the government's actions in combating illegal bets. The entity states that, of the more than 5,200 websites that the government asked to be taken offline, less than half were blocked by Anatel.

ANJL also says that a survey of the platform maintained by the association identified 894 new illegal websites on Monday alone (28) and states that the emergence of new addresses shows the difficulty of combating illegal platforms.