Brazilian authorities has began the closing down of an excess of 2,000 betting sites. This includes those sites which sponsor popular soccer team Corinthians as well as other football clubs in the first division. This is part of the efforts to regulate online gambling in Brazil.
Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America but but it is struggling and the country is suffering from what they call a betting ‘pandemic’.
In 2018, Brazil legalized sports betting sites as well as online gambling. In the past, the sector operated without any rules or taxes. Brazilians are now addicted to gambling games such as Aviator. This gambling game where players gamble on the flight of a virtual airplane. They also engage in an online casino game Fortune Tiger.
These new moves are aimed at protecting users and combating fraud as well as money laundering. The new rules will also ban minors from betting.
“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.
Esportes da Sorte is one of the blacklisted sites which sponsors Corinthians. These betting sites will be banned and blocked from advertising. An excess of 200 other websites will only be allowed to continue to operate only after agreeing to the new rules.
Brazil’s Central Bank estimates that 24 million citizens out of a population of 212 million gamble online.
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