The betting sector in Brazil spends well above the world average for advertising. According to experts, insufficient regulation in the country has also opened the door to aggressive practices to maintain users attached to bets. In the current Club World Cup, one of the main highlights is the omnipresence of bookmakers’ advertisements. Observing the strategies of the platform, the investment has a total sense: the sector investigation stressed that, throughout life, every customer won by bets produces, on average almost seven times what has been spent to attract it.
Despite the regulation, the platforms follow heavy strategies and marketing to make players go, something criticized by the experts.
Last year, a Unibanco Itaú relationship estimated the spending in the sector for marketing in Brazil between $ 5.8 and 8.8 billion. As a result, the bank’s hypothesis is that companies in the sector spend between 45% and 75% of their advertising revenues, something unthinkable for other sectors. By 2023, it is estimated that 3.5 billion of these expenses were directed to the sports environment.
Club shirts are the most visible effect of this scenario in Brazil. Currently, all the teams of the country’s first division have bets of bets as the main sponsors. Agents of other sectors say that the platforms have inflated the market and made it impossible to follow in the middle.
“There is a peculiarity of these platforms, which implies a lot of return with a service that requires very low maintenance costs, which helps to explain how the focus of revenue goes to marketing, since new users are the advertising courses of Eric Mass, a digital average teacher and coordinator of the Armando Alvares University Center (FAP).
Compared to the world average, investments in advertising in Brazil are distinguished. According to the Unibanco Itaú investigation in the United Kingdom, the marketing expenditure was about 20% of the gross revenues of companies.
In the United States, where the betting market is also expanding, companies spend almost 30% of their revenues. “In Brazil, companies exploit a consumer who is still very inexperienced. A more mature society for the theme may not spend so much for bets,” says Mass.
Market profitability
Last year, an openbet report, a company that provides services to the sector, stressed that each user has an acquisition of costs for the $ 354 platform, but that, for life, it produces $ 2,735 at home.
Second Mass, it is a great revocation, which explains how the sector can spend so much in communication. “The market values do not unbalance, as in the event that we see in the sponsorship of sport. The spaces will prioritize the betting houses, since other companies will not have to pay the same,” he says.
Most, most of this audience, spends between $ 10 and $ 50 per week for betting, while a lower part, 7%, provides contributions over $ 200.
About 50% of online sports gambling players bet weekly, while 21% bet daily. Until 2026, the country should have 39 million active accounts and which each manages, on average, R $ 745 in gross revenue in games (GGR), which represents the amount received from the platform, but taken for granted by the prizes paid to the winners.
Effects of regulation
At the beginning of 2025, regulation for the sector in the country, which created some measures praised by experts, such as the ban on arguing that bets are a means of obtaining extra income and so -called “welcome bonus”, which served to attract new users. Direct marketing to minors has also been widely limited.
“Between 2018 and 2023, there has been a failure to make advertising work, with a scenario of chaos, with the player encouraged to bet more and more”, says Christian Stapimi, legal director of the institute of consumer protection (idec).
In turn, the current model, focused on self -regulation, is inefficient in its opinion, as it tends to encourage service providers without facing the consumer in a vulnerable position.
Remember that restrictions on minors do not prevent young people from building with advertising during sports broadcasts or on social networks themselves, which, despite the terms of use, often have users under the age of 18.
The vision is shared by Ivelise Fortim, professor of psychology and technology at the digital games of PUC-SP, which evaluates that there have been few changes in practice with regulation. “Many influencers continue to advertise, while football normalizes practice,” he underlines.
Furthermore, in his opinion, the fact that bets are underlined while adult products blames families for the possible involvement of young people with the game, which is often difficult to control in the digital environment.
“Play now and win”
Fortim also highlights a series of mechanisms used by the platforms to encourage users to play more, including bonus offers and promotions announced as temporary that offer alleged advantages if users use the platform in that period linked to time.
DW did a vast search for social networks of the regulated platforms in the country and found that the bonus offer, usually called “free free” or “rpm” for casinos has become one of the main forms of attraction on which users could bet.
“This type of offer, like the free rounds, can be seen as an offensive practice of companies, since they prevail from the ignorance of consumers to silence a product,” says Stains.
In the vision of the prints, it is important to evaluate the business model of these companies, which would help to understand the risks of these offers. “From the possibilities, you will lose more than earning for the same dynamics as the bet that is made there. We know that it is incompatible with what is promised. Or the business itself would not exist, since the account will not close,” he says.
“We have to see this stimulus with a great sparing so that the consumer continues. They are always there trying to push a product to someone who often does not have the ability to understand all the terms of what it means,” he puts around.
Another element in question is the display of the “probability” so called in transmissions, the chances that the teams have and, consequently, the performance of each bet. Recently, it has become common for sports channels to view this information in Brazil. “The probability encourage to play at that moment and instigate the game, being an advertisement that should not happen,” underlines the press.
In the Senate, a project to limit the advertising of sports betting forbids the viewing of the probability. Approved in the Chamber, the proposal has yet to be devoted to the Chamber.
In at least three cases, the report found content on the Instagram stories that violate the regulation rules. In these cases, the players recorded playing on the platforms and obtained earnings that they affirmed to be easy, without ever losing. The practice that has been recurring among many influencers, with some has confessed the use of false and planned accesses for dependent reproductions.
“What blow, my friend. I increased the bet, I think there are six symbols there, the best symbol of the game. They are $ 2,000 with mega earnings. Call the subsequent stories that made you a connection from our fortune tiger,” says the author of one of the videos, in which he seems to play the online casino that has become popular in the country as “Tigrinho game”.
The very use of characters such as Tigrinho and Foguetinho, another popular online casino in the country, are part of a strategy known as the “gamification” of bets, says Fortim. According to the expert, manipulative design in these cases is a recurring tactic of companies in the sector, which has a special charm with young people. In the principle view, blocking the advertising of this type of animation would be another important step in the regulation of the sector.
Source: Terra
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