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- As the World Cup fuels excitement on the field, online gambling is gaining ground across Latin America, raising new risks for households and new challenges for regulators.
Highlights
- Online gambling is expanding rapidly across Latin America, driven by digital payments, social media marketing, and the appeal of major sporting events such as the World Cup.
- Young people, especially young men, appear particularly exposed, while adolescents are increasingly encountering gambling platforms through social media, influencers, and sports-related content.
- The evidence remains fragmented, making it difficult to assess how much people are gambling, where recreational use becomes harmful, and whether regulation is keeping pace. Closing such information gaps will be essential to inform public policies.
By Suzanne Duryea, Arturo Jose Galindo Andrade, Julieth Andrea Santamaria Bonilla
As the World Cup brings millions of fans back to their screens, another game is unfolding on their phones. For online gambling platforms, the tournament offers a powerful opportunity to gain visibility, attract new users, and become part of the way many people follow sports.
Across Latin America, this rapid expansion is raising growing concerns among policymakers, researchers, and families. Indeed, the spread of digital wallets, instant payment systems, and social media marketing is making online gambling more visible, more accessible, and increasingly present in everyday life.
Yet despite the pace of growth, we still know surprisingly little about its effects on individuals and households across the region. Who is gambling? How is the market changing? And where are the risks related to financial stress, addiction, and broader social harm beginning to emerge?
Online gambling is moving fast
Across the region, online gambling is no longer a niche activity. Awareness of these platforms is now widespread, especially among younger people. In Argentina, for example, 95 percent of people aged 15–29 had heard of online gambling by 2024. What is changing, and fast, is actual participation: by 2025, 32 percent of adults reported gambling in the previous 12 months, more than double the share recorded a year earlier. The shift to digital is just as striking, with online gambling accounting for 71 percent of all gambling activity in 2025, up from 43 percent in 2024.
In Brazil, the expansion is also closely tied to digital payment systems. In 2024, approximately 24 million people, roughly 11 percent of the population, made transfers via Pix (the country’s main real-time payment system) to betting platforms. A 2026 survey suggests participation has continued to rise, with 29 percent of Brazilians aged 16 and older reporting that they had used online gambling platforms.
Elsewhere in the region, the evidence points in the same direction, though at different levels of intensity. In Chile, 18 percent of gamblers played exclusively online, while 26 percent combined online and in-person play. Uruguay appears to be a more moderate case for now, with online gambling still less widespread than in larger regional markets.
Who is gambling online?
The profile of gambling is changing along with the market itself. Once associated mainly with casinos or betting shops, gambling is now moving through online platforms familiar to younger, digitally connected users, often in the same spaces where they follow sports and social media.
The available evidence suggests that this shift is especially visible among young men. In Argentina, 39 percent of men reported gambling in the previous year, compared with 24 percent of women. But the age gradient is even sharper: nearly seven in ten adults aged 18 to 29 reported gambling in the past year, compared with 46% among those aged 30 to 42, 22 percent among those aged 43 to 54, and 17 percent among those aged 55 and older.
This raises particular concerns about adolescents, who may be exposed to gambling environments before they are legally or developmentally prepared to assess the risks. In Argentina, 16 percent of adolescents aged 13 to 18 had already participated in online gambling, while 45 percent said they knew friends or acquaintances who had gambled online.
Brazil shows a similar gender pattern, though a somewhat different age profile. Of the 25.2 million people who placed bets last year, 68.3 percent were men and 31.7 percent were women. Participation, however, appears more evenly distributed across age groups, with relatively small differences in adoption across demographic groups.
The risks do not stop with those who gamble directly. While online gambling appears concentrated among young men, its expansion may also expose women and families to broader harms. Evidence from the United States has linked sports betting losses to higher rates of violence against women, especially where mobile betting is available. Other potential consequences, including household debt and addiction, remain poorly studied in Latin America and the Caribbean.
How much is online gambling costing households?
This is where the evidence is thinnest. Most available studies tell us whether people gamble, but much less about how much they bet, how much they lose, and what those amounts mean for household finances.
In Argentina, available survey evidence suggests that people aged 15 to 29 reported average monthly bets of around $18, with the highest average loss recorded at about $60. Those figures are difficult to interpret without knowing what share of personal income they represent. But the signs of financial strain are clearer: only 13 percent reported losing no money through online gambling, while 48 percent said they had lost a little and 40% said they had lost a lot. More troubling still, one in four reported diverting other funds or going into debt to bet.
The picture looks less severe among adolescents in Chile, at least in terms of amounts wagered: among the 11 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds who gambled in the past year, 79 percent bet less than $10. Even so, gambling among minors raises concerns that go beyond the amounts wagered.
In Brazil, concerns about household vulnerability have already shaped policy. The government banned beneficiaries of Bolsa Família and Benefício de Prestação Continuada, two of the country’s largest social assistance programs, from betting with licensed operators, amid concerns that gambling was drawing money from economically vulnerable households.
What is fueling the rise of online gambling?
Several forces are converging to make online gambling more accessible, more visible, and more normalised than ever before.
First, digital wallets and instant payment systems have helped create a setting in which betting is no longer tied to a physical venue; it can happen instantly, from a phone. In Argentina, for example, the use of digital wallets among gamblers rose from 37 to 57 percent in just one year, and among adolescents who gambled, the figure reached 83%.
Second, advertising and influencers are making online gambling highly visible. In Argentina, four in ten people were exposed to online gambling marketing on social media in 2025, up from three in ten the year before. In Chile, exposure among 12- to 17-year-olds was almost universal. Regulators are beginning to push back, as in Brazil, where authorities have removed hundreds of influencer profiles and posts.
But monitoring is harder when promotion does not always look like advertising. Football stars, club sponsorships, influencers, and fan campaigns have helped make betting part of the experience of following a team, with half of Argentine adolescents who reported gambling saying they did so because a celebrity or influencer recommended it.
Underneath all this lies a subtler shift: gambling is beginning to feel normal, manageable, or even like a form of sports knowledge. Surveys from Uruguay and Argentina point in that direction: many Uruguayans see gambling as something that can be practiced responsibly, while some young Argentines see sports betting less as gambling than as a way to show they understand the game. When a behavior stops feeling risky, uptake can accelerate.
Is online gambling expanding faster than our ability to measure it?
The evidence base remains thin and fragmented. We still lack a clear picture of who is gambling, how often, how much they bet relative to their income, and where recreational betting begins to turn into harm. We also know too little about whether major sporting events such as the World Cup accelerate adoption, or whether regulation is working or simply pushing users toward unregulated platforms. Closing those gaps will be essential if the region is to respond with policies grounded in evidence rather than conjecture.