Brazil Closes 2,000 Betting Sites As Citizens Run Into Debt

As part of measures to regulate online gambling in the country, Brazil has began closing down more than 2,000 betting sites, including those that sponsors popular football team Corinthians and other first division clubs

The Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, while making the disclosure described betting as a pandemic, adding that it has prompted the government to tighten the screws on the sector.

It was gathered that Brazil legalized sports betting sites, online gambling, in 2018, and has operated in a regulatory free-for-all, subject to virtually no rules or taxes.

Some of the most popular sites take bets on sporting fixtures, but Brazilians have also become hooked on gambling games like Aviator, where players gamble on the flight of a virtual airplane, or the online casino game Fortune Tiger.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government has called time on sites that failed to sign up to new regulations due to take effect in January.

The new rules seek to combat fraud and money laundering and protect users, by for example banning minors from betting.

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“Anyone who is not regularized, or in the process of being regularized, is being taken off the air,” Haddad said in a statement.

The finance ministry said it had identified 2,040 “suspicious domains” which it had asked the telecoms regulatory agency Anatel to block.

On the blacklist is Esportes da Sorte, which sponsors Corinthians, one of Brazil’s most popular football clubs, as well as Athletico Paranaense, Bahia and Gremio de Porto Alegre.

The ministry said the betting sites would be blocked and banned from advertising, “which includes, for example, sponsoring football clubs.”

More than 200 other sites will be allowed to continue to operate after agreeing to the new rules.

Brazil’s central bank estimates that 24 million out of Brazil’s 212 million inhabitants, roughly one in nine people, gamble online.

Lula warned recently that betting was causing many low-income Brazilians to get into debt.