Brazil's Provisional Measure 1,394 shuts its regulated betting market

Brazil opened its licensed betting market in January 2025 and has now ordered it closed in thirty days. Provisional Measure 1,394, dated Friday, September 25, 2026 and published that day in an extra edition of the federal official gazette, prohibits the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting throughout the country. On Tuesday, September 29, the legislative consultants of the Federal Senate published their executive summary of the text, which sets out what stops, on which day, and what the government expects it to cost.

Fixed-odds betting is the legal name Brazilian law gives to a bet in which the bettor knows, when placing it, how much a correct guess would return, as Congresso em Foco describes the model. It is the category under which sports betting and online games were licensed. The measure covers bets on real sporting events and on virtual online game events, in physical venues and on digital platforms alike, according to the Senate summary.

The scope is wide in two more ways. The ban applies to operators based abroad that offer bets to people located in Brazil, and it applies to betting authorized by the states or the Federal District.

What stops on publication

Three things ended the day the text was published, the Senate summary says. No new concession, permit or authorization for fixed-odds betting may be granted. Applications still waiting for an administrative decision are set aside. And no new money may enter the accounts operators use to hold bettors' funds, with one exception: sums that come from redeeming or selling financial assets in which bettors' money was already invested on the publication date.

Existing licenses are not cancelled immediately. They are extinguished 30 days after publication, on grounds of public interest. The summary is explicit on the point that will matter most to the companies concerned: operators have no right to a refund, full or partial, of the license fee they paid, and no right to compensation from the state.

A calendar counted in days

The measure sets its deadlines as day counts from publication, not as calendar dates. The daily Diário do Nordeste, in a report of September 28, put the first of them on the calendar: betting sites and apps stop working from October 6.

When access is cut, bets that are still open become void. The bettor is entitled to the full return of the amount staked on a void bet, and to payment of any prize on a bet whose result was already known by that date.

The two days that follow are the operators' responsibility. They must make sure their accounts hold enough to cover every refund, send financial and payment institutions the list of people to be repaid, and send the supporting documents to the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas, the betting secretariat that the Ministry of Finance created in 2024. Missing those obligations carries a daily fine of R$200,000.

Financial and payment institutions then have seven days from receiving that information to return the funds, preferably to the account the money came from. Where a refund cannot be made, the money goes to a dedicated account at Caixa Econômica Federal, the federal savings bank.

Closing does not wipe the slate. The summary says the end of an authorization does not release an operator from its obligations, and the secretariat keeps its powers to inspect and sanction facts that took place while licenses were valid. Sanction proceedings already under way are suspended, and they are closed for good if the operator meets every obligation of the measure on time.

Four ways the ban is enforced

The text does not rely on license withdrawal alone. It names the intermediaries a betting site needs in order to reach a customer, and gives each of them a duty.

The advertising line is the one that reaches furthest outside the betting industry. Communication, advertising, promotion, marketing and sponsorship of fixed-odds betting are all placed under Article 37, paragraph 2 of the Consumer Protection Code, the provision that defines abusive advertising. Advertising material and sponsorship signs have to be removed within ten days of publication. The Senate summary lists no exception by sport or by type of sponsored party.

Blocking requests may come from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security. Internet services that fail in their duty face administrative sanctions, without prejudice to civil and criminal liability.

The measure also creates an interagency committee, coordinated by the Casa Civil, to oversee illegal betting and illegal betting advertising. It provides for the sharing of information among the Federal Police, the federal revenue service and COAF, the financial activities control council, within data-protection and confidentiality rules.

The market being closed

The regulated market was young. Congresso em Foco retraced its history the day after the measure. Fixed-odds betting was legalized by Law 13,756, sanctioned on December 12, 2018, which required regulation within two years, extendable by two more. That regulation was not completed between 2019 and 2022. Platforms, mostly based abroad, grew in those years through advertising on sports broadcasts and club sponsorships, without any federal authorization model.

The framework came with Law 14,790, sanctioned on December 29, 2023. It added online games to the legal category, reserved the activity for companies authorized by the Ministry of Finance, and set the price: R$30 million per company for a five-year authorization covering up to three brands. In 2024 the ministry created its betting secretariat and issued the ordinance that organized the authorization process, dated May 21 of that year. The use of credit cards for betting and sign-up incentives for new users were prohibited the same year.

The regulated federal market opened on January 1, 2025, with authorized operators required to use a dedicated national web address. The measure of September 25, 2026 came less than 21 months later. Shortly before the ban, the Ministry of Finance reported 85 companies authorized to operate, according to the same timeline.

Those two figures give the scale of what the no-refund clause covers. At R$30 million each, 85 authorizations represent up to R$2.55 billion in fees, on the assumption that every authorized company paid the full amount once. The licenses were sold for five years; the oldest will have run for under two.

The rules had been tightening before the ban. In September 2025, recipients of two federal social programs were barred from holding accounts on authorized platforms, following Supreme Court decisions. In November 2025 came self-exclusion tools and mandatory loss and time limits. In July 2026 a centralized self-exclusion platform launched and advertising had to carry warnings about dependence and financial loss.

What the government expects to lose

The Senate summary reproduces the government's own estimate of the revenue it gives up. The loss in tax revenue is put at R$1.541 billion for the rest of 2026, R$5.150 billion in 2027 and R$5.330 billion in 2028.

Over the three years the estimate comes to R$12.021 billion. A second line is added to it: the supervision fee that licensed operators paid to the regulator. The government counts R$38.4 million lost from September to December 2026, then R$115.2 million in 2027 and the same in 2028. Both figures correspond to R$9.6 million a month, and together they come to R$268.8 million over the period.

The reasons given, and the objection from sport

The government's justification, as the Senate consultants summarize it, is that improving the existing rules step by step would not be enough to deal with the harm it attributes to fixed-odds betting. It cites a net transfer of billions of reais from Brazilian families to betting platforms, and effects on mental health that it lists as anxiety, depression, isolation, debt and a higher risk of suicide, with added pressure on public health services. Those effects are what the text offers as the urgency a provisional measure requires.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva backed ending the activity, Congresso em Foco reported, saying Brazilian football should not depend on this revenue and linking the sector's growth to debt and dependence.

The opposition was on record before the text was published. When the idea of restricting or ending the market began to circulate inside the government in September, clubs and sports bodies issued a joint note against a ban. They said betting companies had become an important source of income for top-division clubs, smaller clubs, youth teams and women's football, and warned that a ban could affect existing contracts, reduce investment and push bettors toward clandestine platforms.

The Supreme Court request and what comes next

The first legal answer came within three days. On Monday, September 28, two industry associations, the Associação Nacional de Jogos e Loterias and the Instituto Brasileiro de Jogo Responsável, asked the Supremo Tribunal Federal, Brazil's supreme court, to suspend the measure in full, Diário do Nordeste reported that day. The request is addressed to Justice Luiz Fux.

The associations ask that the suspension last until Congress decides on the measure for good or until the court rules on the cases it already has pending, and that licensed operators be allowed to continue under the previous law in the meantime. According to the newspaper, they argue that the measure had no urgency, that an abrupt stop breaches legal certainty, that operators invested under government supervision, including the R$30 million license fee, and that a ban could push bettors toward the illegal market.

These are the claims of one side. The report records no government reply to the filing and no decision by the court.

The dates already fixed are the ones in the measure itself: access cut and sponsorship removed ten days after publication, refunds in the days that follow, licenses gone at thirty days. The central bank still has to issue the rules that govern the payments ban.

Two decisions remain open. One belongs to the Supreme Court, on the request for suspension. The other belongs to Congress, which may keep the ban, rewrite it or reject it; the measure loses its validity if it is not approved within the constitutional deadline, Diário do Nordeste noted. None of the three sources gives a date for either decision. Until one comes, the measure applies as published.

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