Brazil betting groups ask Supreme Court to suspend Lula’s decree banning bets and online casinos

The Brazilian National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) and the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR) filed a request on Monday (28) with the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to suspend the effects of President Lula’s provisional measure banning the immediate operation, offering, intermediation, and advertising of bets and online casinos in the country. For high-risk operators and their payment partners, the issue is simple: if the ban stands, licensed flow gets interrupted and activity can move fast into the unregulated market.

1. The associations want the STF to suspend the measure in full until Congress definitively rules on it, or until the Court decides the related cases already before it. Their request would preserve the previous legal framework and keep authorized companies operating while the dispute plays out.
2. In the filing addressed to Justice Luiz Fux, who is handling cases on the subject at the STF, ANJL and IBJR argue that the abrupt shutdown violates legal certainty. They also say the provisional measure was issued without any demonstration of urgency, especially since the Executive had already sent Congress the bill that led to the sector’s 2023 regulatory framework, while emphasizing the economic benefits of legalization at the time.
3. The licensed operators say they have invested tens of millions of reais in authorization fees, fixed at R$ 30 million per license, and have built financial reserves and met complex compliance and governance requirements to operate in the formal market under Executive supervision. That matters because it is exactly the kind of sunk cost that disappears overnight if a licensing regime is replaced by a prohibition regime.
4. The groups also say the provisional measure lacks an estimate of its budgetary and financial impact, and lacks prior technical studies on the costs of the interruption for tax revenue, for funding public policies in sport, tourism, and social security, and for formal jobs in the sector.
5. ANJL and IBJR warned that a sudden ban could push bettors in large numbers toward the clandestine, unregulated market, which they say already represents a significant share of betting in Brazil. For PSPs, that is the part of the story that tends to show up later in chargeback, fraud, and counterparty-risk discussions, except here it arrives via regulation instead of operations.

Last Friday (25), on the eve of the first round of elections, Lula, who is running for another term in the Planalto Palace, announced a total ban on fixed-odds betting in Brazil, as well as online games and virtual casinos, including “Jogo do Tigrinho.” The measure goes beyond sports betting and hits the broader online gambling stack in one shot.