Mercado Pago’s World Cup prediction game draws lottery industry accusations in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay

Argentina’s lottery industry has taken aim at Mercado Pago’s Fixture 2026 World Cup prediction game, arguing that its “friends’ tournaments” could be treated as unauthorized betting under Article 301 bis of the Criminal Code. For high-risk payment businesses, the point is simple: when a wallet turns sports prediction into cash prizes, the line between promo mechanic and gambling product gets very thin, very fast.

1. Mercado Pago launched Fixture 2026 at the start of June, ahead of the World Cup, not only in Argentina but also in Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay. The game recreates the old prode format: users predict match results and compete for money prizes inside the wallet.
2. The lottery chamber said the wallet’s “friends’ tournaments” “present characteristics that could be framed as a system for capturing bets under Article 301 bis of the Criminal Code, with the legal consequences that this entails.” In plain English: the complaint is not about a bad promo, but about whether the product itself looks like an unlicensed wagering operation.
3. The public prize structure is not subtle. Mercado Pago says it distributes millions of pesos every day, with 2,000 purchase orders usable on Mercado Pago and Mercado Libre. Users with the best performance then compete by answering questions in the app for $ 20 million daily, and at the end of the tournament the top three in the ranking will enter a trivia for US$ 50,000, US$ 20,000 and US$ 10,000.
4. The tool also lets users create groups of up to 50 people. There are two formats: one described as “friendly, for honor,” and another “for the stakes,” where the contribution cannot exceed $ 70,000 per person. If 50 people contribute that amount, the prize pool can reach $ 3,500,000, with 70% going to the winner, 20% to second place and 10% to third.
5. According to Mercado Pago’s latest figures, Fixture 2026 has already attracted more than 2.3 million Argentines, who have entered a combined 60 million predictions. The company says 90% believe Argentina will win all three group-stage matches: for the debut against Algeria, 40% picked a 2-0 win; for Austria, 30% chose the same scoreline; and for Jordan, most users predicted a 3-0 result.

The sector’s irritation is not just about a flashy World Cup promo. Mercado Pago is currently the main financial provider for many participants, which makes it a distribution rail as much as a product. That matters because legal platforms are trying to separate themselves from illegal ones while courts and prosecutors move to block them, including the March order against Polymarket by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Gambling in the City of Buenos Aires (FEJA), after a complaint from the city lottery.