On 25 September 2026, President Lula signed Provisional Measure (MP) 1.394/2026. It prohibits the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting nationwide, covering sports bets and online games. Under the official text, the ban applies even to operators based abroad who serve people in Brazil. The measure had the force of law on publication, but Congress must convert it within 120 days or it lapses.
The strongest case for the ban
The government's case deserves a fair hearing. Brazil legalised fixed-odds betting through Law 14.790 of 29 December 2023, and the market grew quickly. The government ties the new measure to household debt and gambling dependence, and it announced the measure alongside a debt-relief package. Those harms are real. Compulsive gambling is hard to contain with advertising rules and deposit limits, and a regulator can reasonably conclude that a licensed market has failed to deliver safer play. A ban is the simplest form of consumer protection.
What the measure actually does
The text on the Senate's legislative database sets out four main provisions:
- Scope: Article 1 bans exploitation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting, "inclusive quando realizadas por agente sediado no exterior" (including when done by an agent based abroad).
- Licences: Article 4 extinguishes existing authorisations thirty days after publication, which is around 25 October. It also states that the extinction gives no right to a full or partial refund of the licence payment, and no compensation.
- Shutdown: Article 7 requires operators to take sites and apps offline ten days after publication. Press reports put the date at 6 October, with player withdrawals open until 5 October.
- Enforcement: Article 24 creates an interinstitutional committee coordinated by the Casa Civil to combat illegal betting and its advertising, with its powers left to later regulation.
The measure also reaches state and Federal District lotteries, so it is a blanket prohibition and not a tightening of the existing licensing rules.
The legal challenge turns on urgency
On 28 September the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) and the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR) asked the Supreme Federal Court to strike down the measure. The case went to Justice Luiz Fux, who already handles cases on this market. Their central argument is procedural. The Constitution allows provisional measures only for relevant and urgent matters, and the associations say the government showed no real urgency and cited no technical studies. They point to a detail from the access-to-information record. A request filed on 20 September asked the Finance Ministry for studies supporting a ban, and on 24 September, the day before the signing, the ministry answered that no such information existed.
The associations also say that each operator paid R$30 million for a five-year authorisation. Their filings ask for suspension of the measure until Congress acts, or alternatively for a transition period of at least six months that preserves player withdrawals. On 2 October, Fux gave the government 72 hours to respond. As of this writing we have not found a ruling on the suspension requests.
Why prohibition is the wrong tool
The industry's numbers are self-interested, but they undercut the "uncontrolled growth" narrative. The associations report that betting volume in the first half of 2026 fell 12.4% against the first half of 2025, from R$100.9 billion to R$88.48 billion. The number of bets rose 9.5%, while the average value per bet fell by roughly a fifth. These are advocates' figures and we have not independently verified them. If they are accurate, the licensed market was already contracting in value terms when the ban arrived.
The larger problem is enforcement. A measure that bans offshore operators too must be enforced against sites that are one domain-switch away. Blocking is a game of whack-a-mole, and the government itself is already being asked about mirror domains in a congressional information request. When licensed operators leave, demand does not disappear. It moves to unlicensed sites that offer no deposit limits, no identity checks and no complaints channel. Those are precisely the safeguards the 2023 law created. A prohibition therefore removes the one regime that gave Brazil's regulator visibility into who is betting and how much.
The measure also penalises compliance. Operators that applied, paid and built compliance systems lose their licences without compensation, and the associations warn that investors will price this into any future state authorisation. Brazil already uses regulated markets in other sectors to move activity out of the grey economy. Telling investors that a licence can be cancelled by executive decree in thirty days undermines that approach well beyond gambling.
The proportionate path was available. Stricter advertising limits, mandatory spending caps, bans on credit-funded deposits, and tougher enforcement against unlicensed offshore sites would all have targeted harm directly. Each could have been evaluated with data, and the government's own ministry apparently held none on a ban.
What to watch
Two decisions matter. The first is whether Justice Fux finds that the urgency requirement was met. A ruling that it was not would restrain the executive's use of provisional measures for sweeping economic bans. The second is whether Congress converts the measure within 120 days, amends it to add a transition and compensation, or lets it lapse. Whatever happens, Brazil has traded a contested but visible regulated market for a ban whose enforcement it has not yet explained.