Zona de Azar Brazil – Brazil: Betting in Brazil Monitored to Protect Consumers

Brazil.- 18th March 2025 www.zonadeazar.com Betting in Brazil is Monitored to Protect Consumers Online betting in Brazil, which has been regulated since the beginning of 2025 by the Ministry of Finance’s Betting and Prizes Secretariat (SPA), has been the result of an almost six-year process. More than 200 betting companies applied for a license to operate in the country, a milestone considered successful by the SPA.

As this is a recent form of entertainment, specific precautions have been taken to ensure consumer protection, including the Responsible Gambling program.

Importance of protection measures for the gambling sector in Brazil

Régis Dudena, secretary of the SPA, highlighted the importance of these measures during an interview with UOL Apostas. “In the responsible gambling ordinance, there is a sequence of measures, which is know your customer. And based on ‘know your customer’, actively monitoring the platform for screen time and the amount of spending.

So, to begin with, we have a regulatory duty, which is for them (bookmakers) to have a responsible gaming policy. This policy is accessible and controlled by us. Based on this policy, they monitor and profile the punter.”

The secretary continued: “I always like to use the extremes here. The young person on a low income or the retired millionaire, they have different availability, both in terms of time and resources.

So, the bookmaker will have to identify, and we know that today, through algorithmic monitoring, without actual identification, but based on the bettor’s behavior, it knows, in a short time of using the betting platform, it knows, in general, who the bettor is.

That way, if the punter starts to spend more time than the profile it has previously identified, it has to issue an alert. Then, once this alert has been issued, they say, “Hey, you’ve been playing for a long time, you’re spending a lot of money. That’s it”.

Dudena explained that “after more time or more money, it generates a mandatory pause. So he says, oh, let’s go outside and have a drink? Because you’ve been here too long, you won’t be able to do it anymore. And at the end of the day, he could exclude this punter too. All this is already planned.”

Monitoring and data sharing

According to Dudena, monitoring is constant and data is shared with the SPA. In addition, the authority tracks reports of debt and mental health problems associated with gambling in Brazil.

“We’ve been trying to do more and more, which is to go one step further than recognizing the person who got into debt, had mental health problems associated with the bet, and wants to know where it went. Because the diagnosis is still that these big problems of big debts, big losses, as a rule, don’t occur in companies that have already been authorized, but in other companies. That said, we know that even authorized companies are going to have problems.”

National awareness campaign under development

Asked about ludopathy, the secretary said that a national awareness campaign is being developed, although there is still no date for its launch. “We’re working on making both health tests and debt tests available.

We have a working group that is being effectively implemented together with Health, SECOM and the Ministry of Sport, in which we are going to discuss ways of putting this mental health test in place to make it available to bookmakers.

The idea is that we also build a kind of debt test, so that with a few answers, answering a few questions, people can get feedback on whether they have a debt problem.”

The regulated sector is considered fundamental in the fight against gambling and illegal websites. Régis Dudena stressed that the SPA is prepared to maintain strict monitoring.

“The problems are not trivial. I’m quite convinced that the existence of a regulated sector, that the existence of controlled authorizations is already a great start for us to be able to control the most serious problems of indebtedness and mental health.

But in addition, monitoring these companies and ensuring that they don’t slip up is going to be another of the secretariat’s daily tasks,” he concluded.

Edited by: @MaiaDigital www.zonadeazar.com