Why Banning Betting Advertising May Help the Wrong People

By Wagner Fernandes

Fresh from the Senate’s Science and Technology Committee (CCT), a proposal to amend Brazil’s Sports Betting Law has reintroduced a familiar policy instinct: banning betting advertising altogether. The bill would prohibit sponsorships, media campaigns, and brand communication across the country, effectively pushing licensed operators out of public visibility. It still has a legislative road ahead, but the mere fact that such a measure is gaining traction already reveals something worth examining.

There is something oddly theatrical about trying to build a regulated betting market with one hand, while cutting off its ability to exist in public with the other.

Brazil has spent years moving betting out of the shadows and into a regulated framework. 

That was the whole promise:

Create rules.

License operators.

Raise compliance standards.

Protect consumers.

Push illegal actors out.

Build an ecosystem that is transparent, taxable, and accountable.

So far, rational.

But then, deep from the dark halls of god-knows-why, comes the familiar political reflex: BAN!

And nothing says “we don’t understand a dime about market dynamics” quite like regulating an industry into existence and then pretending brand visibility is some kind of optional extravagance...

So, let me be direct and clear:

In a (newly) regulated market, advertising gains a new meaning, a second (but not secondary) function, which is signalling integrity and legitimacy.

Ads, sponsorship, or other brand public exposure inform the market as a whole and consumers specifically about licenced operators, accountable brands, and businesses that invest in long-term presence rather than short-term extraction.

It helps the public distinguish between those who play by the rules and those who circle around them. And in a category where trust, recognition, and compliance actually matter, that distinction is structural.

A market cannot mature if its legal participants are forbidden from becoming recognisable.

This is where the debate gets intellectually flat. It treats all advertising as if it were the same. As if there were no meaningful difference between aggressive, irresponsible messaging and lawful, controlled brand communication. As if the only options available to policymakers were chaos or silence.

That binary thinking may be mistaken for policy.

The real question is not whether betting advertising should exist without limits.

The question is whether a regulated industry can truly develop when compliant operators are denied the tools to build brand equity, public familiarity, and consumer trust.

The answer is quite straightforward: it cannot.

Brands are not superficial accessories in regulated sectors. They are how trust scales.

A strong brand is a public signal of continuity, reputation, and accountability. It gives consumers a reference point and creates memory, standards, and consequences for bad behaviour.

A company with a visible brand has something to lose. An illegal operator does not.

That is why blanket bans are so often politically seductive and commercially naive. They confuse visibility with harm when in reality, visibility is often what allows a regulated market to function with clarity.

And no, the black market is not, or shouldn’t be, the main point here. It is simply the inevitable shadow cast by bad policy.

If legal operators are muted, constrained into irrelevance, or stripped of the ability to build recognition, consumers do not suddenly become more informed or protected. They become less able to tell who is legitimate. The market becomes noisier, not cleaner. And the actors who thrive in that ambiguity are rarely the compliant ones.

This is one of the parts policymakers are blind about: weak legal brands create space for stronger illegal ones.

Other sectors have shown different versions of the same lesson.

In financial services, visibility and brand-building are often essential for trust, especially when consumers are choosing between compliant challengers and opaque alternatives.

With the rise of liberalised markets, like telecoms, consumer choice becomes real only when legitimate brands are allowed to explain themselves and differentiate clearly.

Digital markets more broadly demonstrate that the lack of visibility rarely protects consumers. More often, it rewards whoever is least constrained and least accountable.

The pattern is embarrassingly consistent: in regulated markets, the answer to risk is not invisibility, it’s disciplined visibility, having rules with teeth.

The Regulator, or the market self-regulating, should be banning misleading claims, irresponsible creativity, messages aimed at minors, and promises of wealth.

But banning the very existence of brand communication is not a sign of regulatory maturity; it’s a sign that policymakers do not trust themselves to regulate with nuance.

And that is the real problem with blanket advertising bans. They are lazy-minded and, instead of solving complex problems with smart policies, they run away from them.

If the goal is to protect consumers and strengthen the legal market, then the answer is stricter standards, sharper enforcement, and smarter communication rules.

Shutting up the brands only makes serious operators harder to see, and the wrong actors harder to spot.

Silence is not the answer.