Brazil's betting ban strips sponsors from its Counter-Strike teams

Twelve days after Brazil banned betting sponsorship, the country's Counter-Strike scene looks different. Three teams have taken betting brands out of some or all of what they publish, two organizations have stepped back from the game, and the company that holds or sponsors most of the country's top-level tournament broadcasts is a betting operator. The Esports Advocate set out the picture in a report published on Wednesday, October 7, 2026.

The cause is Provisional Measure 1,394, signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on September 25. It bans the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting, online and in person. A provisional measure applies as soon as it is issued and lapses unless Congress approves it, which is why every change described here is real today and none is yet permanent.

The Esports Advocate, October 7, 2026; the team count is credited there to Dust2, citing The Esports Radar.

What Article 16 asks of a sponsored team

The part of the measure that reaches esports is its Article 16. According to The Esports Advocate, it extends the ban to communication, advertising, promotion, marketing and sponsorship related to betting, in any medium, physical or digital, when the content is aimed at the Brazilian public. Advertising material and sponsor branding had to come down within 10 days of the measure's publication. Licensed betting sites went dark on October 6.

Two other articles decide how far that goes in practice. Article 17 exempts content published before the measure in which betting advertising is incidental. Article 19 turns to the platforms that carry content. They must stop betting promotion aimed at Brazilians from circulating, including, as The Esports Advocate reads the text, promotion generated by third parties.

The penalty for platforms is in Article 22: a fine of up to 10 per cent of their group's revenue in Brazil. A company with no Brazilian revenue faces up to R$1,000 per registered user, capped at R$50 million (US$9.6 million) per infraction.

Which teams have changed their sponsors

The Esports Advocate did not survey the teams itself. It relays a count by Dust2, which cites the outlet The Esports Radar, and adds what it could see on its own.

The first five rows describe what was visible, and no more. The report does not say that any of these contracts has been ended, suspended or renegotiated. It also notes what remains unknown: how much of the sponsorship revenue of Brazilian teams came from betting operators.

The Esports Advocate adds one observation of its own. On October 7, the header of MIBR's account on X showed IQUNIX and other partners from outside betting, with no 1xBet branding.

Two parties did not answer its questions. The Esports Advocate says it contacted paiN Gaming on October 2 and Spun Mídia, the company that owns MIBR and the team LOS through its EZOR unit, on October 4, and had no reply from either.

Keyd Stars and LOUD step back

The clearest break came on Wednesday, September 30. Keyd Stars, which competes as Vivo Keyd Stars and whose main sponsor was EstrelaBet, announced that it was pausing its Counter-Strike 2 project indefinitely and releasing its players. The Esports Advocate calls it the first Brazilian Counter-Strike organization to step back.

The club gave its reason in one phrase, printed by HLTV and by The Esports Advocate: recent changes in the competitive landscape and in the country's business and regulatory environment. The Esports Advocate does not say whether the loss of its sponsor caused the decision. Dust2 Brasil tied the decision to the betting ban and to changes in Valve's competitive model, a reading that belongs to that outlet.

The same day, LOUD let go of a Counter-Strike roster it had never presented. HLTV reported on October 1 that the five, who play under the name LP, were dismissed without having officially represented the organization. According to Dust2 Brasil, as relayed by HLTV, LOUD had completed the signing in May and had paid for a training camp in Portugal and the entry fees of several tournaments. LP stood 107th in HLTV's team ranking of September 28 and had finished between fifth and eighth at three consecutive events in Portugal. The team intends to stay together while listening to individual offers, HLTV wrote.

LOUD has not explained its decision. The Esports Advocate found no public statement from the organization, and HLTV's article names no sponsor for the team. HLTV placed both exits in the same context, a turbulent period for Brazilian esports after the betting order, without stating a cause for LOUD's.

MIBR and the longest-running deal

Of the partnerships on the list, MIBR's is the one with the most documented history. The Esports Advocate reported on November 26, 2025 that 1xBet first sponsored MIBR's Counter-Strike team in 2022, and that the club was extending the deal to its team in the Valorant Champions Tour Americas, known as VCT Americas. The brand was to appear on that team's jerseys, in its video content and on its social media. Neither the length nor the value of the extension was disclosed.

MIBR presented that extension as a first: the first betting sponsorship of a team that Riot Games had approved, after a compliance process that began earlier in 2025, when Riot opened League of Legends and Valorant in the Americas and in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to companies from the betting sector.

Less than a year later, the brand is absent from the club's header on X. Nothing in the reports says what has become of the contract itself.

The broadcasts depend on one betting company

Team jerseys are one half of the story. The other is the screen. The Esports Advocate writes that BetBoom, a betting company that also sponsors FURIA, holds or sponsors most of Brazil's top-level Counter-Strike broadcasts, through three agreements dated in three consecutive months.

In December 2025 it became the media rights holder and exclusive betting partner of the organizer BLAST for Portuguese-language and Spanish-language broadcasts in Latin America. In January 2026 it signed a three-year deal for the Brazilian broadcast rights to the tournaments of the organizer PGL. On February 26, 2026, The Esports Advocate reported that it had become the sponsor of the Brazilian broadcasts of every Counter-Strike 2 tournament run by ESL FACEIT Group for the rest of the year, ESL Pro League Season 24 and IEM China among them. The financial terms of that last agreement were not disclosed.

ESL Pro League Season 24 is being played this week in Katowice, Poland. The Esports Advocate watched part of the Portuguese-language broadcast of the match between Team Spirit and M80 on October 7, on the Kick channel of the streamer Gaules. The sponsors shown in the corner of the screen rotated through DHL, Intel and Acer's Predator brand. No BetBoom branding appeared in the part it watched.

The report lists what is not known: whether BetBoom's agreements with BLAST, PGL and ESL FACEIT Group contain a clause that lets a party leave when the law changes, and who is paying for the Portuguese-language broadcasts now. In Brazil itself, Dust2 Brasil cancelled the remaining events of its BetBoom Storm series, citing, in the version relayed by The Esports Advocate, circumstances beyond the control of the parties involved.

There is a second set of rules on top of the national one. Valve's tournament license, the contract an organizer accepts to run a Counter-Strike event, allows a betting sponsor's message only when the operator is officially licensed, or explicitly permitted by law, in the territories it targets. The measure cancels every federal betting license in Brazil 30 days after its publication, with no refund of the fee.

What is decided, and what is only proposed

By October 1, the Brazilian outlet InfoMoney had counted at least 26 amendments filed in Congress, The Esports Advocate reports. Two come from Deputy Marcos Braz. One would allow betting on final results and scores again. The other would preserve what its text calls the passive display of brands on uniforms and in arenas, under sponsorship contracts that already exist, for 24 months.

None of the amendments described mentions esports. The Esports Advocate points out that the texts do not say whether a team jersey, an overlay on a broadcast or a streamer's channel would count as passive display.

The dates that come next

The president of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre, extended the deadline for amendments to October 13, according to Brasil 247, citing O Globo. The runoff of the presidential election follows on October 25, and The Esports Advocate treats its result as one of the things that will decide whether the ban survives.

The last date is the furthest. Congress has until January or February 2027 to approve the measure, InfoMoney reports, the exact day depending on when it breaks for recess; the members of the joint committee that must examine it had not been named. If Congress does not approve it by then, the measure lapses.

The Esports Advocate ends its report on the question this leaves Brazilian teams with: cut their 2027 budgets now, or wait for Congress and for the result of October 25.

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