Brazil betting amendment leaves licence shutdown rules intact

Provisional Measure No. 1,394/2026 prohibits fixed-odds betting in Brazil, including activity by authorised operators. Issued with force of law, it also sets separate periods for ending existing authorisations and disabling access to betting websites and applications. A pending congressional amendment proposes an exception for licensed sports betting and online games, but does not expressly change those transition provisions.

The issue is amendment 28, submitted by Julio Arcoverde. It would replace Article 1 of the provisional measure, not amend the separate provisions governing licences, transition duties and platform access. It is a proposal, not an adopted exception.

The Congress register lists 42 amendments. Four—numbers 12, 18, 19 and 20—have been withdrawn, leaving 38. The official calendar sets 13 October as the end of the amendment-submission window.

Amendment 28 redraws the market boundary

Article 1 of the 25 September Provisional Measure No. 1,394/2026 prohibits the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting in Brazil, in physical and virtual environments. It includes foreign operators offering the activity to people in Brazil. The provision covers real sporting events and virtual online games, while excluding other lottery modalities authorised by law.

Amendment 28 would instead apply the prohibition to people or businesses without valid authorisation from the competent authority. It would permit authorised operators to offer both sporting-event bets and virtual online games. Its treatment of online games includes random-number generation and physical random events transmitted live from a studio, subject to regulation.

Its text retains two licensed product categories and expressly addresses live-studio games.

If adopted, that wording would define a regulated-market boundary rather than a sports-only exception. It also directs the executive to prioritise the identification, blocking and repression of unauthorised betting. The two provisions perform different functions: one defines the authorised activity and products, while the other directs enforcement against activity outside that boundary.

Arcoverde’s justification argues that excluding online games from the authorised market would shift demand towards illegal providers and remove safeguards including age checks and self-exclusion. That is the amendment’s policy rationale. The text does not establish the claimed market outcome, quantify displacement or demonstrate how effective the proposed enforcement would be.

Product permission does not preserve the licence

Article 4 provides for existing concessions, permissions and authorisations to expire 30 days after publication, without removing transition-period obligations. Article 6 prohibits new authorisations from the publication date and addresses pending applications. Article 7 requires access to betting websites and applications to be disabled ten days after publication.

Amendment 28’s operative text replaces Article 1. It does not expressly replace Articles 4, 6 or 7. Read together, those provisions create a drafting conflict: an exception for operators holding valid authorisation must be reconciled with rules extinguishing those authorisations, preventing new ones and shutting access.

That is a textual analysis, not a conclusion about how Congress or a court would resolve the interaction. The proposal’s permission to offer a product does not itself show that the legal route to holding the necessary authorisation has survived.

The enforcement clause has the same limitation. It directs priority action against unauthorised betting but does not describe a replacement licensing process. An operator could therefore face a permission to offer specified products in Article 1 alongside provisions that end its existing authorisation and require its platform to close.

Article 8 shows why the transition requires a separate assessment. Within two days after access is disabled, operators must make refund resources available and provide individual customer-balance information to financial institutions and the Finance Ministry. The funds remain segregated for repayment. Failure to meet the specified obligations attracts a daily R$200,000 penalty. A proposed change to Article 1 does not expressly rewrite those requirements.

The measure also separates the end of an authorisation from the end of an operator’s responsibilities. Article 10 preserves obligations arising during the authorised period and requires relevant records to remain intact and accessible for at least five years. Article 11 retains reporting through Sigap to the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting, including information on balances, refunds, revenue and responsible-gambling measures.

For operators, the control decision is whether to treat amendment 28 as a basis for continued or restarted activity. A pending amendment is not permission to operate, and its proposed Article 1 wording does not establish that the separate transition provisions would cease to apply. Operators should therefore track the proposed Article 1 permission against Articles 4 and 6 on authorisations, Article 7 on access and Articles 8, 10 and 11 on refunds, records and reporting.

The next official consolidated text must expressly reconcile Article 1 with Articles 4, 6 and 7. Until then, operators should not treat amendment 28 as authority to continue or restart activity. The decisive evidence will be whether Congress changes the licence-extinction and shutdown provisions alongside the proposed exception.