40% higher: that is the delinquency rate among members of Sicredi who bet on bets, Brazil's online gambling sites, during 2025, compared with members who did not bet. In practical terms, the bettor's household budget runs short more often when the car installment, the electricity bill or the credit card comes due. The survey was released on Sunday (20) by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.
Sicredi, one of Brazil's largest cooperative banking systems, runs more than 90 credit cooperatives with 10.5 million members in every state of the country, more people than the population of Portugal. The study covered 1.3 million members who bet last year, about as many people as live in the city of Porto Alegre. It checked individuals with active loans in July 2026 and whether they had bet online between January and December 2025.
More betting, more missed payments
The study links delinquency to how often and how much people bet: more frequent wagers and larger amounts come with more missed payments. Among bettors themselves, frequent players are 40% more delinquent than occasional ones. "It was a [negative] surprise. Our findings on this project are extremely important", Sicredi CEO César Gioda Bochi told Folha.
What it means: in Brazil, inadimplência (delinquency) means having an overdue payment, usually one more than 30 days late, such as a loan installment or a credit card bill. The debtor's name typically goes on credit bureau blacklists, the so-called "dirty name", which makes new loans more expensive or blocks them entirely. The Sicredi study shows a statistical correlation between betting and default, not proven causation.
The figure is double the one in a study by Insper and the payments company Stone released in early September, which found that people with overdue payments are on average 20% more common among bettors; on credit cards, delays reach almost 40%. That study estimated about 25 million people bet on regulated platforms in 2025, more than the population of the state of Rio de Janeiro. "What the study confirms is that betting has had a harmful effect on indebtedness", StoneCo economist Rômullo Carvalho said in comments reported by CNN Brasil.
"What is left to pay loan installments gets smaller and leads to higher delinquency. So this is something relevant to the economic recovery process", Bochi said.
According to Bochi, 50% of Brazilian families' annual income is already committed to debt, the equivalent of six months of work per year just to cover installments. Higher delinquency among bettors erodes repayment capacity and slows the economic recovery, he said. "It is not only the urban individual, but also in the rural producer context", Bochi said.
Central Bank is watching
The preliminary results were delivered to the board of the Central Bank, which is studying how online bets, regulated in Brazil since January 2025, affect household debt before adopting corrective measures. Its current focus is default in Pronaf, a federal program that offers cheap rural credit to small family farmers. The Central Bank declined to comment when contacted by Folha.
About 20 days ago, at a banking industry event, Central Bank supervision director Aílton de Aquino called bets a "central element" in household indebtedness and labeled as "fake news" the view that betting firms do not contribute to debt. He also questioned betting ads inside financial apps. Bochi wants Brazil to follow international practice, with tighter limits on advertising and sponsorship.
The Sicredi analysis is preliminary and has no breakdown by income bracket, region, activity or type of loan. Folha also reports that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promised measures against the betting sites.