Brazil Bans Sports Betting and Online Casino by Decree, With Sites Dark From 6 October

Provisional Measure 1.394 ends Brazil's licensed betting market less than two years after it opened, extinguishes every licence within 30 days and rules out refunding the R$30 million each operator paid for one. It took effect on Friday, nine days before the first round of the presidential election.

• President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed Provisional Measure 1.394 on 25 September, banning the operation, offer, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting in Brazil, covering both sports betting and online casino games, with immediate effect
• Deposits stopped on publication; sites and apps must go offline ten days later, open bets are void and refunded in full, and banks then have seven days to return players' balances, with anything they cannot return sent to an account at Caixa Econômica Federal
• Every licence issued under the 2023 betting law is extinguished after 30 days, and the measure rules out any refund of the R$30 million licence fee or any compensation, going further and faster than a deputy's bill to void every licence in 180 days
• Banks and payment schemes, including Pix, must refuse betting transactions, app stores must remove betting apps, and internet platforms face fines of up to 10% of their Brazilian revenue for carrying betting content
• Operators' associations say they will go to court; the measure needs Congress's approval within 120 days to remain in force, and the prison terms the government wants are in a separate bill

Brazil Ends Its Licensed Betting Market Less Than Two Years After Opening It

Brazil has banned fixed-odds betting. Provisional Measure (Medida Provisória) 1.394, signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Finance Minister Dario Durigan and Justice Minister Wellington César Lima e Silva on Friday 25 September and published in an extra edition of the Diário Oficial da União the same day, prohibits "the exploration, offer, intermediation and advertising" of fixed-odds betting in Brazil, in physical or virtual form, including by operators based abroad that serve people in the country. The ban covers bets on real sporting events and on "virtual events of online games", defined as games whose result comes from a random number generator, which is to say online casino. Other lotteries authorised by law are unaffected. The measure took effect on publication.

It goes further than the compromise reported earlier this week, when the government was split between a full ban and a ban on online casino alone. On Wednesday Lula said that ending the bets "is a decision". The government presented the ban as a response to household debt and gambling harm. According to the Ministry of Justice, more than 1.3 million Brazilians have asked to be excluded from betting platforms, 51% of them citing health problems, and the annual social cost of online betting is estimated at R$38.8 billion (approximately $7.5 billion). Lula compared the sector to a tumour that had to be removed, according to Agência Brasil.

The ban came with a new round of the Desenrola Brasil debt programme. The government will spend R$15 billion (approximately $2.9 billion) buying up to R$150 billion of household debt that is two to four and a half years overdue, at discounts of at least 90%, according to Reuters, with the auction scheduled for November and priority for families whose debt relates to betting, according to the Ministry of Justice.

A Ten-Day Wind-Down, With Refunds Through the Banks

The measure sets a short timetable. From publication, no new money may enter players' accounts. Ten days after publication, operators must take their sites and apps offline, including in app stores, or be blocked; the government has set that for midnight on 6 October, with players able to withdraw their balances until 23:59 on 5 October, according to the Ministry of Justice. Bets not settled by then are void and stakes are refunded in full, "with discounts of any kind prohibited", while winnings on bets already settled must be paid.

Within two days of going offline, operators must ring-fence the money owed, send each bank that holds their accounts a list of players by taxpayer number (CPF) with the amounts due, and send the same list to the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) with proof that the funds exist. Missing that deadline costs R$200,000 (approximately $38,600) a day. The banks then have seven days to pay each player into an active account in the player's name, preferably the one the money came from. Anything they cannot return goes to a dedicated account at the state bank Caixa Econômica Federal, under Finance Ministry supervision.

The measure also offers operators an incentive to comply. Every SPA sanction case not finally decided by 25 September is suspended, and will be closed for good if the operator meets all of its wind-down obligations on time.

No Refund for Licences That Cost R$30 Million

Article 4 extinguishes every concession, permission and authorisation granted under Law 14.790 of 2023 at the end of 30 days from publication. The extinction, it says, "arises from reasons of public interest" and gives operators no right to a full or partial refund of the licence fee paid under Article 12 of that law, which was R$30 million (approximately $5.8 million) per operator, "nor to compensation by the State". Pending licence applications lapse. The same 30-day extinction applies to the fixed-odds licences issued by the states and the Federal District.

Ending the licence does not end the obligations. Operators remain liable for tax, anti-money-laundering, responsible gambling and sporting integrity duties for the period they were licensed, must keep their records for at least five years, and must keep reporting to the SPA's betting management system, Sigap. The measure revokes most of Law 14.790 and the fixed-odds chapter of Law 13.756 of 2018, the law that first created the product. About 90 companies held federal licences, according to iGaming Business.

Banks, App Stores and Platforms Are Enlisted

Banks, payment institutions and payment schemes, including the instant payment system Pix, are barred from processing betting transactions, under rules to be set by the Central Bank, which must also build a system to reject and return Pix transfers linked to illegal betting. The measure extends the regime under which banks already freeze the accounts of illegal operators: money in blocked accounts can now be declared forfeit to the Union in an administrative process, without a prior court case, and sent to the National Public Security Fund.

All advertising, marketing and sponsorship of fixed-odds betting is banned in any medium, including any content aimed at Brazilians "regardless of format or form of payment", and existing advertising and sponsorship signage must be removed within ten days. Content published before the measure that carries betting advertising incidentally is exempt. Internet platforms have a duty of care to stop betting content circulating, must take it down on notice from consumer authorities or the Ministry of Justice, and app stores and operating systems must block betting apps. Breaches can bring fines of up to 10% of the group's Brazilian revenue, or R$10 to R$1,000 per registered user capped at R$50 million (approximately $9.6 million) per infringement, with suspension reserved for repeat offenders. The telecoms regulator Anatel and the internet steering committee CGI.br will carry out blocking orders.

The prison terms are not in the measure. According to the Ministry of Justice, a separate bill proposes four to six years for operating betting, and two to four years each for promoting it, misusing personal data to recruit players, facilitating payments and providing platforms.

Operators Head to Court as the Vote Approaches

The National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) called the move unprecedented in the global industry and aimed "solely at perceived electoral gain", according to iGaming Business, and said it would go to court to overturn it. It warned that the ban would push 30 million bettors into the irregular market, according to Meio & Mensagem. The Brazilian Institute for Responsible Gaming (IBJR) called it "a rupture of the regulatory framework built by the State itself" and said that "shutting down this market shortly after its implementation will have significant economic and legal consequences". The Brazilian Advertising Association (ABAP) acknowledged "grave problems" with compulsive gambling and said its members would comply, but asked for legal certainty on the transition rules.

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula's right-wing opponent, called the measure "populist, hypocritical and politically motivated", according to Reuters. The Finance Ministry estimates that households spend about R$60 billion a year on online betting, generating roughly R$10 billion in tax, Reuters reported; the federal tax take from betting reached R$9.91 billion in the first eight months of this year alone. Among listed groups, JPMorgan analysis cited by Reuters puts Brazil at about 9% of Evolution's sales and 6% to 7% of EBITDA at Betano, owned by Allwyn, with Entain and Flutter also exposed.

The No-Refund Clause Is Where the Legal Fight Will Be

Brazil spent 2024 building its licensing regime and opened it on 1 January 2025, charging each operator R$30 million for an authorisation meant to run for five years. The measure takes those licences back within a month and says, in terms, that none of that money comes back. That is the clause most exposed to challenge. The IBJR's argument, that the state is breaking a framework it built itself, goes to legitimate expectation, and a provisional measure must also meet the constitutional tests of relevance and urgency, which operators will say a ban on a market the government regulated only yesterday does not. The government's answer is already in the text: the extinction is framed as a matter of public interest, backed by health and debt figures. How the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) weighs a public-health justification against R$30 million fees paid in good faith will decide whether the ban costs the Treasury billions in damages or nothing.

A Lapse in Congress Would Not Bring the Licences Back

The measure needs Congress to convert it into law within 60 days, extendable once by another 60. But the licences are extinguished on day 30, long before Congress must vote. On a plain reading of Article 62 of the Constitution, if a provisional measure lapses and Congress does not pass a decree regulating what happened under it within a further 60 days, acts carried out while it was in force stand. Operators could therefore lose their licences even if Congress never approves the ban, and would have to apply again under a revived law. The Constitution also bars provisional measures on criminal law, which is why the prison terms sit in a separate bill: the ban takes effect now, but the penalties that make it enforceable against offshore operators depend on a Congress that has not yet voted on either.

The Illegal Market Gets the Customers, and the Banks Get the Job of Stopping Them

Since January 2025 Brazil's own regulator has argued that licensing was the way to take players away from unlicensed sites. The ban reverses that logic: every licensed brand goes dark on 6 October, while the offshore sites the SPA has spent that time blocking remain the only option for players who want to keep betting. The government's answer is enforcement through the payment system rather than through licensing, with banks, Pix and app stores carrying the burden and the Ministry of Justice reporting that 1,367 sites and profiles were taken down on the day before the announcement. That model can raise the cost of illegal play, but markets that rely on blocking have tended to reduce illegal play rather than end it, and the ANJL's warning about 30 million bettors is, in effect, a forecast that enforcement will lose the race for players who have learned to bet online.

The Timing Makes It a Campaign Measure First

The measure was signed nine days before the first round on 4 October, the sites go dark two days after it, and the 30 days that extinguish the licences run out on or around 25 October, the date of a possible run-off. It arrived alongside a debt relief programme aimed at the same voters. Whatever its merits as health policy, the ban's survival depends on the result of the election and on the next Congress, which is why operators are likely to fight it in court and in the legislature at the same time.

Brazil has shown that a government can end a licensed betting market in a month by decree. Whether it can keep the players it has pushed offshore from following them is a question the Central Bank, the banks and the courts will now have to answer.