Sportsbooks, known as bets, have surpassed popular platforms and taken the position of second most accessed type of domain in Brazil, according to recent data from SimilarWeb, a company specialized in monitoring global digital traffic.
The survey revealed that the significant increase in access is mainly due to the expansion of these sportsbooks’ applications on the Google Play Store, after the big tech released betting games – including online casinos and online betting.
Now, the Brazilian public can easily find these apps, contributing to a new wave of betting growth in the country.
In the betting universe, the audience refers only to platforms legalized in the national territory. According to the Internet Steering Committee (CGI), there were already 193 regularized sportsbooks in Brazil.
However, this number does not include bets placed on unregulated sites, which still represent a significant share of the market.
Leonardo Benites, communications director for the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL), explained the phenomenon: “Even considering the marketing investments made by the industry today, the amount of traffic we generate makes perfect sense. This only adds to the idea that this is something that Brazilians were looking for and will continue to look for.”
Benites added: “We had extremely pent-up demand, because games and betting have been legally banned in Brazil since 1948.
I am sure that today traffic is only in second place because it only deals with regulated bets. We still have a significant share of the illegal market in Brazil, because actions to combat illegality are still slow”.
The beginning of the era of authorized betting in Brazil
The betting market reached a turning point in January, when some companies began to operate under license in Brazil. Although this legalization occurred in 2018, fixed-odds betting houses had to comply with a series of requirements from 2025:
- Obtaining a license from the Prizes and Betting Secretariat of the Ministry of Treasury.
- Payment of R$ 30 million in concession fees
- Compliance with regulations on money movement and identification of bettors
- Encouraging responsible gaming
- Changing the domain to “.bet.br”
The domain change has made it easier for SimilarWeb to track and compare hits, which now groups data from the industry’s top players. However, this method is currently being revised to ensure more accurate market analysis.
FAAP marketing strategy consultant and professor, José Sarkis Arakelian, highlighted: “This comparison is important to show the dimension that bets have in the market”.
Arakelian considered, however, that caution is needed: “The comparison needs to be analyzed carefully, since it is made between an entire segment and individual platforms, such as social networks and news sites”.
