Brazil's decision to ban fixed-odds betting outright has a serious case behind it. Betting apps spread quickly after the 2023 legalisation, household debt is a live political problem, and the government argues that licensed operators could not keep unlicensed ones off the market. Police have run 12 operations on betting-linked crime since March 2023, according to the government's own tally. A minister who concludes that regulation failed has a real argument. The question for a pro-innovation publication is not whether gambling harms exist. It is whether the route Brazil chose, a provisional measure enforced through mass site blocking, is proportionate and durable.
What happened
Medida Provisória 1.394/2026 was signed by President Lula and published in the Diário Oficial on 25 September 2026. According to the Senate's legislative database, it prohibits the operation, offer, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting lotteries nationwide, creates an interinstitutional enforcement committee, and revokes numerous articles of Lei 14.790/2023, the law that had created the licensed market.
The ban does not distinguish licensed from unlicensed operators. Canaltech reports that it covers both companies currently authorised and foreign platforms serving Brazilians. The Justice and Finance ministries issue blocking requests, Anatel relays them to telecom operators and can choose the technical method, and CGI.br takes part for .br domains.
The pace was rapid. By 29 September, the Ministry of Justice reported that the two ministries had requested the takedown of 5,209 domains, of which Anatel had already ordered 2,387 blocked. Separately, 186 apps were notified for removal from the Apple and Google stores by 6 October. Congresso em Foco adds that 300 Facebook pages and 90 Instagram profiles were taken down, and that platforms including Google, Meta, X, Telegram and TikTok were notified to remove betting advertising. Nationwide ISP blocking began on 6 October.
The consumer-protection design is the best part
The government deserves credit for one element. Users had until 23:59 on 5 October to withdraw balances, companies must report remaining balances to banks by CPF, banks refund from 9 to 14 October, and Caixa Econômica Federal is the fallback payer. Bets with no outcome within ten days of the MP are annulled and refunded. An abrupt prohibition that protects the bettor's money is far better than one that strands it.
Where the design is weak
Blocking is fast, and review is slow. Within days, ministries had put thousands of domains on lists. Anatel's role, as the Canaltech and government accounts describe it, is to transmit and technically implement orders, not to assess them. No independent body reviews a listing before it takes effect. A list that large will inevitably include errors, and the remedy for an erroneously blocked domain is a court action after the fact. Brazil's internet governance bodies, including CGI.br, have long pressed for transparency and due process in blocking; a mass-blocking regime run through ministerial requests tests that tradition.
A provisional measure is a fragile instrument for a ban of this size. As Correio da Manhã reports, an MP lasts 60 days, extendable once, and lapses if Congress does not convert it, in which case the previous rules return. Operators, banks, ISPs and app stores are being asked to rebuild their systems around a rule that could revert. The same report says the sector associations ANJL and IBJR have asked the Supreme Court (STF) to suspend the MP, arguing that a provisional measure should not abruptly halt a market that Congress and the government had already regulated. The STF has not yet resolved those challenges.
The licensed market is penalised for complying. Operators that applied for authorisation under the 2023 law, paid fees and accepted oversight are treated the same as offshore sites. That sends a corrosive signal to any regulated industry: compliance does not buy stability. It also risks pushing users toward the very offshore operators the ban targets, because demand does not disappear when domains are blocked and mirror sites are cheap.
The Stake episode
The courts have already shown the strain. On 8 October, Judge Cristiane Farias Rodrigues dos Santos of the 9th Federal Civil Court in São Paulo granted the licensed operator Stake a partial injunction allowing it to operate until 25 October, though she did not declare the MP unconstitutional. The next day, as Focus Gaming News reports, TRF-3 president Luis Antonio Johonsom Di Salvo granted the Union's appeal and suspended that authorisation. The report notes that no immediate blocking of Stake's site was expressly ordered. So the operator has neither a clear right to operate nor a clear order to stop, which is precisely the legal uncertainty that deters investment.
A more proportionate path
If the aim is to stop harm, Brazil has narrower tools. It could strengthen enforcement of the existing licensing regime, target payment flows and advertising by unlicensed operators, which the government's own five-axis strategy already includes, and enforce the strict advertising and vulnerable-user rules the 2023 framework already provided. Where blocking is used, it should be limited to unlicensed operators, published in a reviewable register, and open to rapid challenge. Congress, not an emergency decree, should decide whether a legal market survives.
The next tests are the STF's treatment of the challenges and whether Congress converts the MP before it lapses. Whatever the outcome, thousands of blocked domains in two weeks is a measure of speed, not of effectiveness.