Brazil’s 85 betting authorisations expire under Lula’s provisional measure

Brazil's 85 federal authorisations for fixed-odds betting, held by 82 companies, expired on 25 October, when the 30-day period set out in Article 4 of Provisional Measure 1.394/2026 ended, according to a media report. Almost 190 brands lost authorisation without reimbursement. The measure took effect on the night of 25 September.

Each authorisation cost R$30m for five years, plus a R$5m security deposit. Operators paid R$2.55bn for the grants and contributed about R$7.5bn in share capital, according to Carlos Lima, chief executive of the Brazilian Institute for Responsible Gaming (IBJR). LCA Consultoria Econômica and Cruz Consulting calculated a multiplier effect of up to R$28bn. The funds covered CPF verification, facial recognition, integration with the Betting Management System (Sigap) and contracts with football clubs, arenas and technology providers.

Law 14.790/2023 underpinned the launch of the regulated market in January 2025, with the Prizes and Betting Secretariat (SPA) of the Ministry of Finance issuing the licences. Under that framework, accredited international laboratories, problem gambling programmes, KYC rules with biometric identification and an oversight fee were brought in. MP 1.394, signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took effect on the night of 25 September. It bans betting offers and advertising in order to "protect families from indebtedness," treats the authorisations as precarious and revokes most of Law 14.790/2023. Deposits and bets were halted at once, and operators had just a few days to give customers their money back; authorised websites and applications went offline on 6 October.

Lima described legal certainty as the source of the predictability that long-term investments require, and noted that firms had built complex operations whose amortisation was planned across 60 months. According to a survey by the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL), over 3,500 workers lost their jobs within the first 14 days of the MP. LCA puts the revenue at risk from the ban at as much as R$73 billion ($14.6 billion) for 2027 to 2030. IBJR cautioned that early termination without reimbursement may heighten how investors perceive risk in telecommunications, airports, ports and other regulated markets.

MP 1.394 must be analysed by Congress by 25 November, a deadline that can stretch to early March 2027 if a 60-day extension is granted. Starting 9 November, the measure will block the National Congress agenda. On 23 October the joint committee still did not exist, lacking both a president and a rapporteur. Of the nearly 100 amendments, the majority would keep sports betting while leaving out online casino. Lima noted that a rejection after 25 October might restore the legal basis of the activity, though the position of expired authorisations would stay unresolved.

In Lima's words, scrapping the authorisation severs the link to the unified self-exclusion database and to the mandatory limit controls that companies run, so the State can no longer see user behaviour as it happens. By July 2026, over 1 million bettors had signed up for self-exclusion, and SPA reports that 25.2 million people, each identified by CPF, placed bets on authorised sites during 2025. A study by LCA Consultores for IBJR, drawing on Locomotiva Institute research, put the illegal market's share at 38%-44% in the first half of 2026, down from 41%-51% in 2025. Between 9 and 12 October, ANJL's Legitbet tool detected 221 new clandestine addresses, bringing the count of reachable irregular pages to 30,844.

Lima pointed out that such sites pay no taxes in Brazil, ask for neither identity verification nor facial recognition, provide no self-exclusion tools, and sit beyond the reach of the Council for the Control of Financial Activities (COAF) and the Federal Police. He added that fraudsters copy the names and visual identities of brands that once held licences in order to carry out financial scams.

IBJR and ANJL turned to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) on 28 September, filing Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) 8.027, which seeks to suspend the MP pending a fresh public hearing or a decision by Congress. Football clubs and the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (Abert) filed suits as well. The Attorney General's Office (AGU) has suggested holding a hearing, yet it wants the MP to stay in force in the meantime. Justice Luiz Fux, the rapporteur, has not decided on the injunction, and no date has been scheduled for judgment.

According to IBJR, the postponement makes it harder to contain layoffs and lets clandestine platforms capture demand in the interim. At the hearing, IBJR intends to push for tighter rules: automatic deposit limits per CPF, required pauses after continuous play, risk warnings in advertising, and blocking of IP addresses, DNS and payment methods tied to unauthorised sites. Lima stated that regulated companies welcome and uphold a regulatory framework that keeps getting stronger, since steady refinement of the rules is, in their view, the sole means of shielding consumers without pushing them toward illegality. Article 10 of the measure obliges operators to retain registrations, transaction histories and access logs for a minimum of five years.