The third edition of SBC Summit Rio, held from 3 to 5 March at Riocentro, recorded 15% more attendees compared to the previous year, consolidating its position as the industry’s main meeting point at the beginning of the year in Brazil. This is no small feat considering the trajectory of the event itself: the 2025 edition had already closed with 12.000 attendees and a growth of 200% compared to its first version, which earned it the Exhibition Growth of the Year award at the EN Indy Awards 2025.
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The jump between editions is not explained solely by the consolidation of the event. It also reflects the transformation that the Brazilian market underwent after the entry into force of the new regulatory framework. Law 14.790/2023 came into effect on 1 January 2025, and twelve months later the sector had 79 operators with active licenses, more than 25.000 illegal sites blocked, and tax revenue that went from practically zero to $1.864 million in a single fiscal year. SBC Summit Rio 2026 was the sector’s first major meeting with those numbers on the table.
Attendee quality as an indicator of market momentum
Growth was especially solid among strategic audiences: the presence of operators increased by 16% and that of affiliates by 26,7%, including the content creator segment. Senior-level executives represented 38,7% of attendees, compared to one in four in the previous edition.
This change in profile is what Carla Dualib Sonnewend, LATAM Business Development Manager at SOFTSWISS, translated into concrete terms by noting that the conversations on the exhibition floor were of exceptional quality. The critical mass of decision-makers does not come to an event because the event is large. It comes when the market it represents has something real to solve.
The event’s international reach also expanded: 60,78% of attendees resided in Brazil, while the rest arrived from more than 100 countries. Andreas Ditsche, CEO of iGaming.com, formulated it in terms that well synthesize the state of the industry: being on the ground and feeling the market climate is not an operational luxury. It is a condition for doing business in a country where the rules have changed profoundly and where local nuances determine the viability of each strategy.
Regulators and operators on the same stage
One of the features that distinguished the 2026 edition was the active presence of government voices in the conference program. Daniele Correa Cardoso, interim Secretary of Prizes and Betting of the Ministry of Finance, and Giovanni Rocco, National Secretary of Sports Betting of the Ministry of Sports, participated in a keynote titled «The Making of a Regulated Market», offering a direct perspective on what occurs in regulatory decision-making. Representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Sports, and the National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation (CONAR) were also present.
Plínio Jorge, president of the ANJL, highlighted that the joint presence of regulators and industry is not a protocol gesture. It is evidence that the Brazilian regulated market was built in part through that dialogue, and that sustaining it requires continuing it.
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The program was delivered by more than 250 experts across three stages and covered leadership, technology, payments, marketing, and affiliation. Among the operators who spoke were representatives from BetMGM Brazil, Betano, Stellar Gaming, Flutter Brazil, EstrelaBet, Caixa Loterias, and Keno Loteria. The program also included a keynote by Chris Kypriotis, former CEO of Nike Brazil, who addressed how high-performance cultures translate into sustained business results, an angle that the Brazilian gaming industry is beginning to incorporate more seriously as competition among licensees becomes more technical.
Payments: the summit within the event
The Payment Expert Summit was one of the most valued additions to the program, offering a specific space for operators looking to adapt their payment strategies to the particularities of the Brazilian market, with a focus on KYC, fraud prevention, and regulatory compliance.
It is no coincidence that payments have their own summit within the event. The ordinance that restricted transactions in the sector to supervised electronic payments, banning cryptocurrencies, cash, and credit cards for betting, turned the fintech ecosystem into regulatory infrastructure. Pix, which in 2024 processed 57.000 million transactions with a total volume of $3,8 trillion, is today the dominant channel in the sector. For an international operator wanting to enter the Brazilian market, understanding how that architecture works is not a technical detail. It is the starting point.
What Brazil shows the rest of the region
Jurisdictions such as Argentina, Colombia, and Peru face their own regulatory processes and observe the Brazilian case as a reference model. With more than 215 million inhabitants and an economy that represents approximately 40% of Latin American GDP, Brazil condenses lessons in its regulatory experience that are unlikely to be repeated in another market in the region.
What SBC Summit Rio 2026 made evident is that these lessons are no longer hypothetical. Today they translate into concrete results. The first year of the regulated market produced measurable tax revenue, a clear number of formalized operators, and a volume of illegal market that still persists but now has a known dimension. From that basis, the discussion at Riocentro was not about whether the regulation worked. It was about how to make it work better.
Rasmus Sojmark, CEO and founder of SBC, summarized it at the close of the event: industry feedback makes it evident that the Brazilian market is just beginning. SBC Summit Rio will return to Riocentro from 2 to 4 March 2027.
