Search
In a 60-page reply filed hours before licensed sites went dark, Jorge Messias asks the Supreme Federal Tribunal to refuse every request to suspend Provisional Measure 1.394, to wait for Paulo Gonet's opinion and to consider a new public hearing. The debate it proposes is one the government did not hold with the industry before it banned betting.
Betano, Superbet, Sportingbet and EstrelaBet now send Brazilian visitors to a government page that says their platforms are offline by order of Provisional Measure 1.394. Justice Luiz Fux let the operators' midnight deadline pass without a decision, and R$1.33 billion of unclaimed player money now passes to the banks.
The first month to reflect the higher rate brought in 108% more online gaming duty than a year earlier, more than the rate rise alone explains. The industry says one month proves nothing; the Treasury, three weeks from a Budget that may double Machine Games Duty, may read it differently.
The Upper Tribunal has ruled that free spins won on a free promotional game fall outside Remote Gaming Duty, reversing the First-tier Tribunal and wiping out the assessment against the Super Group subsidiary. With the duty now at 40%, the ruling reaches well beyond one operator, unless HMRC appeals or Parliament changes the law.
The government's lawyer has told the Supreme Federal Tribunal that the laws which created Brazil's licensed betting market are unconstitutional, reversing the position it took in 2024. It did so in a different case from the one in which Justice Luiz Fux gave it 72 hours, and operators, clubs and Flamengo want his answer on the ban before licensed sites go dark at midnight.
The Supreme Court's betting rapporteur now holds every action against Provisional Measure 1.394, and has asked the Attorney General's Office to respond before he decides anything. Its deadline lands as licensed sites go dark, while Congress has pushed its own amendments past the election.
Brazil's betting ban polls far better than the market it replaced, but most voters say it will not decide their vote, and Lula has now said the election is why he acted. Broadcasters, operators and six football clubs have asked the Supreme Court to step in before licensed sites go dark on 6 October.
A national association of mayors has filed a third direct action against Provisional Measure 1.394, Flamengo has been admitted to the Supreme Court's betting cases, and the first 12 amendments in Congress include a slots-only rewrite. None of it has yet stopped the clock: licensed sites go dark on 6 October.
The justice and finance ministries say they have asked for 5,209 betting domains to be blocked since the ban and reached channels on Telegram with more than a million members. The licensed industry says illegal sites are multiplying, but its own monitors disagree by a factor of ten on how fast, and one says almost none are new.
Deputy prosecutor-general Lucas Rocha Furtado, a declared opponent of betting, has asked the Federal Court of Accounts to push the ban back by almost three months and to make the government account for the R$30 million each operator paid for a licence. The court has not ruled, and its power over a provisional measure is limited.
The Attorney General's Office wants Betano, Bet365, Superbet and 14 other operators to repay the public health system, pay collective damages and refund double the stakes of diagnosed gamblers they kept accepting. It filed three days after the government banned their product.
A freedom-of-information reply described by BNLData says the ministry held no assessment of what banning betting would do, though the memorandum its minister signed the same day priced the tax loss. The R$38.8 billion social-cost figure the government cited was built from English estimates, and its authors say it shows association, not causation.
Brazil's betting ban does not stop at the federal licences: it also ends the fixed-odds licences issued by the states, and Rio de Janeiro's lottery says it will comply. Football, which took more than R$1 billion from betting sponsors last year, meets the Sports Ministry in Brasília on Tuesday.
The government wants operating a betting site to carry four to six years in prison and has asked Congress to treat the bill as urgent. At the same time, operators' associations have asked the Supreme Federal Tribunal to suspend the ban, arguing that it fails the Constitution's own test for a provisional measure.
The Malta Gaming Authority has suspended a casino and betting licence on four grounds, including a clause that covers unmet financial commitments. The notice says players must still be able to see their accounts, but it says nothing about withdrawals.
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.
Camarines Sur representative Arnie Fuentebella told colleagues the application has been "neither approved nor disapproved", contradicting the interior secretary, who said last week it had been denied. Roque is wanted at home on non-bailable trafficking charges tied to a former offshore gaming hub.
Five months after the Finance Ministry ordered the site blocked, its markets on the October election are still reachable and a Portuguese-language account is promoting a candidate's lead among bettors. The AGU has asked for the file.