FactCheck: Bradesco BBI report overestimates the GGR of bets in Brazil by 2,5x.
A report by Bradesco BBI on the betting market in Latin America, quoted by the Brazil Journal in the article "Bets will continue to grow, says Bradesco BBI" , published on September 8, presents a significant error in the estimate of gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Brazil.
According to the bank, cited in the report, Brazil's GGR "jumped 33% last year to US$17 billion" after the liberalization of the online betting market. For 2026, the bank expects more moderate growth of 11%, to around US$20 billion.
What the official data shows
According to a report released by the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets of the Ministry of Finance (SPA-MF), the gross revenue (GGR) of the regulated fixed-odds betting market in 2025 was R$ 36,9 billion — equivalent to approximately US$ 6,7 billion at the average dollar exchange rate during the period (~R$ 5,5/US$).
The value cited by Bradesco BBI is therefore approximately 2,5 times greater than the official figure declared by licensed operators subject to SPA-MF oversight.
It is noteworthy that other figures in the report — 25,2 million bettors and an average ticket of R$122/month — coincide exactly with official SPA-MF data. This indicates that the error is concentrated specifically in the conversion or definition of the GGR base, and not in the bank's own independent estimate of the market size.
The projection for 2026 also deviates from the actual data.
Data obtained by BNLData via the Access to Information Law (LAI) from SPA-MF shows that the regulated market ended the first half of 2026 with a Gross Revenue (GGR) of R$ 20,07 billion , a 15,3% increase over the same period in 2025.
Projecting this pace for the full year — whether by simply doubling the semester's figure (R$ 40,1 billion), or by applying the same growth rate of 15,3% to the official 2025 base (R$ 42,6 billion) — the 2026 GGR should be between R$ 40 billion and R$ 43 billion , equivalent to approximately US$ 7,6 billion to US$ 8 billion at the average dollar exchange rate for the year.
The number is far from the US$20 billion projection made by Bradesco BBI for 2026 — a difference of a similar order of magnitude to that observed in the 2025 data, which reinforces the hypothesis of a systematic error in conversion or base definition in the bank's methodology, and not a one-off discrepancy.
The question that Bradesco BBI needs to answer.
The discrepancy of US$10,3 billion between the bank's figure (US$17 billion) and the official figure (US$6,7 billion) — equivalent to approximately R$56,7 billion at the average exchange rate for 2025 — is too large to be explained by a simple difference in rounding or cutoff date. This leaves Bradesco BBI with two alternatives, and there is no comfortable third option:
⇒ The bank made a mistake in the conversion or calculation basis of the GGR , artificially inflating the size of the Brazilian market — the most likely scenario, given that the other data in the report (user base, average ticket size) match the official figures; or
⇒ The bank is including, within its $17 billion GGR, some estimate of the illegal market not declared in the report's methodology — which would imply that the clandestine betting market in Brazil would move something in the order of R$ 56 billion in GGR, a value far above any estimate available to date (the H2 consultancy itself, cited in industry reports, calculated the illegal market at around R$ 16,3 billion in 2025 — less than a third of the gap identified here).
Either hypothesis is uncomfortable for the bank. If it's the first, the report needs a public correction. If it's the second, Bradesco BBI would be endorsing the thesis that the illegal market is several times larger than any estimate currently available—contradicting the common discourse among part of the regulated sector that the illegal market is now a marginal phenomenon. It is not possible to simultaneously maintain that Brazil has a GGR of US$17 billion and that the illegal market is insignificant: the two statements do not add up together.
Why does it matter
Reports from investment banks like Bradesco BBI are widely reported in the press and used by investors, managers, and policymakers to assess the size of the betting sector in Brazil. An error of this magnitude would be significant.
⇒ distorts the perception of the true size of the Brazilian betting market compared to other Latin American countries, according to the same bank survey;
⇒ It can artificially inflate the "boom" narrative of the sector, used by both proponents and critics of regulation;
This illustrates the importance of comparing market estimates with official administrative data from SPA-MF before repeating them.
Methodology of this FactCheck
The official data cited in this text are sourced from balance sheets released by the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting of the Ministry of Finance (SPA-MF) and data obtained by BNLData via the Access to Information Law (LAI). The currency conversion uses the approximate average dollar exchange rate in each reference period. The GGR projection for the full year of 2026 is a simple extrapolation from the actual result of the first half of the year and is subject to the seasonality of the sporting calendar, which usually concentrates a higher volume of bets in the second half of the year.
Online betting in Brazil will continue to grow, according to Bradesco BBI.
