ANJL goes to Brazil’s Federal Court to keep betting licences alive and prepares a second action over site access and payments

The Brazilian National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) has filed a collective writ of mandamus against Provisional Measure No. 1.394/2026, which banned fixed-odds betting in the country. The first filing is narrow: keep the authorisations and customer-facing channels in place for 32 member companies. A second, broader filing is already being prepared, and that is the part PSPs, acquirers, and banks will care about: sites, financial flow, deposits, and the operational plumbing.

1. ANJL filed Mandado de Segurança Coletivo No. 1114596-86.2026.4.01.3400 on the night of 7 October, and the case was assigned to the 13th Federal Civil Court of the Federal District. In a note sent to member companies and obtained by BNLData, the association said it will also file a second writ, “with a broader injunction request,” to secure “the continuity and regularity of betting operations.”
2. The association said the new action will be distributed by contiguity to the first one and will have a “broader scope.” In practice, ANJL says it will cover “the maintenance of websites, the preservation of financial flow, the receipt of deposits and the other aspects necessary for the operation of the platforms.” It also said it is “monitoring the injunctions that are being granted,” without naming them.
3. The first petition was deliberately framed as the minimum possible request. ANJL wrote that it was not asking for its members to keep operating bets while Congress deliberates: “The Petitioner does not ask that the Associated Companies continue to offer bets while the National Congress deliberates. It only asks that the acts of enforcement do not make final something that the Constitution itself treats as provisional.”
4. The filing is signed by lawyers Pietro Cardia Lorenzoni, Bernardo Cavalcanti Freire and Plínio Lemos Jorge. It does not challenge the constitutionality of the provisional measure; that issue has been left to the Supreme Federal Court in ADIs 7721, 7723, 7749, 8024, 8027 and 8028. Instead, ANJL is targeting the execution measures attributed to four authorities: the Secretary of Prizes and Bets of the Ministry of Finance (SPA/MF), the Director-President of Anatel, the National Secretary of Digital Rights of the Ministry of Justice (Sedigi/MJSP), and the Coordinator of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br).
5. The two injunction requests in the first case would run until the end of the MP’s legislative process in Congress. One would stop SPA from treating the members’ authorisations as extinguished on 25 October, the 30-day deadline set by Article 4 of the MP. Betting activity would remain suspended during that period. The other would bring back the “.bet.br” domains, social media profiles and apps solely for institutional communication and bettor support, with no betting and no advertising, and would suspend the orders from Sedigi that redirected all sites to brasilsembets.gov.br.

ANJL says it represents 32 operators holding 34 of the 85 authorisations granted by SPA. The association says those authorisations account for R$ 2.55 billion in licence fees. For high-risk payment providers, the real point is obvious: this is not only a licensing fight, but a fight over whether betting brands can keep their front-end presence, their depositor channels, and the cash movement that makes the whole stack work.