Opinion 

Thiago Iusim, Founder and CEO of Betshield Responsible Gaming, examines the lessons of Brazil’s betting market and argues that modern regulation must be accompanied by effective player protection, enforcement, and public trust.

Brazil officially launched its regulated betting market on January 1, 2025, under a regulatory framework inspired by best practices from more mature markets. The framework introduced licensing requirements, technical controls, customer identification procedures, anti-money laundering measures, advertising rules, data-sharing obligations with regulators, and specific Responsible Gaming requirements.

However, having modern regulations does not automatically guarantee that consumer protection and public legitimacy will develop at the same pace.

In September 2026, the federal government published a Provisional Measure that, according to the author, prohibited the operation, offering, intermediation, and advertising of fixed-odds betting. The scope and future of this decision remain part of the political and regulatory debate surrounding Brazil’s market.

For Thiago Iusim, this experience raises an important question for Peru and the rest of Latin America: what could Brazil have done differently?

1. A Regulatory License Does Not Guarantee Social Legitimacy

When authorized operators began operating in January 2025, they received permission to function within the legal framework. However, government authorization does not automatically generate public trust.

The market’s first months presented an important opportunity to explain the differences between licensed and illegal operators, the taxes paid by the industry, the investment and employment it generates, the controls it must meet, and the safeguards designed to protect minors and vulnerable consumers.

According to Iusim, industry communications focused considerably on brands, odds, bonuses, sponsorships, influencers, football, and customer acquisition. While these activities are part of the business, he believes the industry did not do enough to explain why a regulated market can offer greater safeguards than an illegal one.

The industry achieved visibility, but that did not necessarily translate into social legitimacy. In the author’s view, building public trust must be an ongoing effort.

2. Responsible Gaming Must Go Beyond Communication

Iusim identifies Responsible Gaming as one of the market’s main opportunities for improvement. In his view, adding messages such as “Play responsibly” at the end of an advertisement is not enough.

As betting is a digital activity, platforms generate data on deposits, wagers, sessions, and changes in user behavior. This information can help identify risk signals and guide preventive measures.

The author notes that Brazil’s regulatory framework already included obligations related to identifying risk profiles and monitoring player behavior. However, he argues that implementation did not reach the same level of maturity across the market, while enforcement capacity was insufficient to ensure consistent practices.

Regulators should therefore assess not only whether operators have monitoring systems in place, but also how those systems work, which signals they identify, what interventions they trigger, and what results they deliver.

From this perspective, Responsible Gaming should not be treated merely as a compliance requirement. It should lead to verifiable measures and measurable outcomes.

3. Monitoring Must Look Beyond Individual Platforms

Individual monitoring also has limitations: each operator primarily sees the activity taking place on its own platform.

According to Iusim, a person may appear to present a low level of risk when their activity is assessed separately across different operators, even though a consolidated view may reveal significant changes in their gambling behavior.

For example, deposits may increase on one platform, attempts to recover losses may appear on another, and more frequent late-night activity may emerge on a third.

For the author, the next stage in player protection could involve real-time behavioral monitoring and the development of centralized models capable of identifying patterns across different licensed operators, provided that applicable regulations and data protection requirements allow it.

The objective, he explains, would not be to diagnose players or automatically block them, but to identify early warning signs and enable proportionate interventions before risky behavior develops into a more serious problem.

4. Centralized Self-Exclusion Must Be Combined With Early Prevention

Another issue highlighted by Iusim is centralized self-exclusion. According to his analysis, the system was introduced in Brazil almost eleven months after the regulated market opened, allowing individuals who excluded themselves from one platform to continue gambling on others during that period.

The author believes this mechanism should have been part of the market’s player protection infrastructure from the outset. However, he also stresses that self-exclusion and behavioral monitoring serve different purposes.

Self-exclusion allows individuals to decide when to stop gambling, while behavioral monitoring aims to identify warning signs earlier.

For this reason, he advocates combining both tools as complementary layers of player protection.

Modern Regulation Requires Enforcement and Continuous Improvement

Brazil’s experience, Iusim argues, demonstrates that even a modern regulatory framework can face implementation challenges when enforcement does not progress at the same pace.

Effective oversight requires data, technology, specialized teams, audits, and evidence to determine whether regulatory measures are working. The solution is not necessarily to introduce more rules, but to develop the capacity to assess compliance and outcomes.

The author also believes the industry must go beyond formal compliance and demonstrate that it understands the risks associated with its products and uses information and technology to mitigate them.

What Can Peru and Latin America Learn?

In Iusim’s view, Latin American markets have an opportunity to incorporate these lessons from the earliest stages of their regulatory frameworks.

His main recommendations include building public trust from the outset, explaining the differences between legal and illegal markets, placing Responsible Gaming at the center of industry strategy, implementing measurable and enforceable behavioral monitoring systems, and including centralized self-exclusion as part of the basic player protection infrastructure.

He also emphasizes the importance of regulators and operators using data to assess whether their policies are effective.

Brazil built a modern regulatory framework, the author acknowledges, but its experience highlights that establishing rules is only the first step. The subsequent challenge is to protect players, enforce regulations, measure results, learn, and build trust.

Ultimately, a regulatory license allows an operator to do business. Social legitimacy, Iusim concludes, is essential for the industry’s long-term sustainability.