Responsible Gambling in Brazil: The Progress and the Remaining Gaps

In just over a year, Brazil went from a regulatory vacuum to one of the most robust regulatory frameworks in global iGaming. Law No. 14,790/2023 and the rules from the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA/MF) brought the market into full operation on January 1, 2025, with requirements on par with international standards: federal licensing, mandatory .bet.br domains, identity verification and biometrics, payment limits, the end of deposit bonuses, and mandatory responsible gambling tools. It's a pace that puts Brazil, in the words of psychologist and Association for Player Protection and Support (APAJ) founder Rafael Ávila, at “a level similar to countries that have regulated betting for decades, like the UK and Australia”.

Public health moving in step with regulation

The Brazilian case stands out for how closely public health policy tracked the legislation itself. Care infrastructure arrived almost simultaneously, not years behind the law, as it has in many other regulated markets. The Ministry of Health has rolled out a Care Pathway and Care Guide for Gambling Disorder, folding the issue into the public health system (SUS) and its psychosocial care network.  The underlying logic, as Ávila frames it, treats the bettor as two things at once: "a consumer, who needs clear rules and protection, and someone who may need mental health care”.

A Centralized Self-Exclusion Platform now lets bettors block access to every licensed operator at once using their national ID, and has already passed half a million sign-ups. Telehealth support for players and families is live, alongside a self-assessment tool people can use to check their own relationship with gambling.

Where regulation still runs into practical limits

None of this means the work is finished, as the most immediate strain is enforcement. Keeping real-time tabs on responsible gambling and advertising compliance across 187 licensed brands is, by Ávila’s account, "bigger than the regulator's current structure can handle" - and rules that aren't actively enforced tend to become commitments on paper rather than practice.

There's also a structural inconsistency between federal and state oversight: operators licensed by the SPA/MF sit alongside others operating under separate state licenses, so the protections a bettor gets can depend on which site they're using, undercutting the predictability the federal law was designed to deliver. And the illegal market hasn't gone anywhere. Tens of millions of Brazilians are still betting on unlicensed sites with no identity checks, no limits, and no safeguards at all, pulling bettors outside the reach of everything the regulated market has built.

The role the industry still needs to play

If there's a single place where Rafael Ávila sees the most room for improvement, it's inside the operators themselves. Most licensed companies still engage only lightly with shaping public health policy, training staff, or opening a dialogue with regulators. His bar for what responsible gambling actually means is higher than a compliance checkbox: "it's more than a badge in the site's footer and a self-exclusion link. It means having teams trained to recognize warning signs, staying connected to the care network, and operators who see themselves as part of a health system, not just companies meeting the bare minimum of their license". Operators who take that seriously end up protecting players better and strengthening the long-term health of the market itself.

What comes next

At this stage, Brazil already has the legal framework it needs. What’s missing is follow-through, Ávila says: "It's making the law count, and the industry doing its part". In practice, that means enforcement capacity that actually matches the market's size, tighter alignment between federal and state rules, a firmer response to illegal operators, and an industry that treats responsible gambling as core to its own sustainability.

The next few years will determine whether the already-built foundation turns into lasting practice - a job that falls jointly on government, regulator, and operators, with the private sector carrying real weight in getting it right.