Brazil publishes new betting ad rules that can hold operators and influencers liable

The Brazilian federal government has published new rules for betting advertising, and the sector is treating them as a formalisation of what was already moving in that direction. For PSPs, operators, and affiliate networks, the important bit is not just the warning labels — it is the liability chain now running through operators and contracted influencers.

1. Ordinance No. 73 was published on Friday (11) and sets out a joint framework between the Ministry of Finance, the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom), and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP). It regulates the advertising, communication, and offering of fixed-odds betting.
2. Enforcement will be split across the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA/MF), the National Consumer Secretariat (Senacon/MJSP), and the National Secretariat for Digital Rights (SNDD/MJSP). In practice, that means betting ads can now be examined both as a consumer-protection issue and under the betting law itself.
3. Every advertising piece must now carry mandatory warnings, including: “apostar faz você perder dinheiro” (“betting makes you lose money”), “apostar pode causar dependência” (“betting can cause dependence”), and “apostar não é investimento” (“betting is not investment”). The model is explicitly compared to cigarette and alcohol campaigns.
4. The rules also ban tactics that create a sense of urgency, present betting as an investment or financial solution, use previous winnings to push more rounds, or mislead consumers. If contracted influencers break the rules, the operator can be penalised too, and the offending content must be removed.
5. Sanctions can be applied independently by Senacon and SPA. Beyond financial penalties, final enforcement can trigger an administrative procedure by Secom to suspend or cancel the offender’s registration in the Cadastro Nacional de Agentes de Veiculação de Publicidade (Midiacad).

Bernardo Cavalcanti Freire, legal consultant to the Associação Nacional de Jogos e Loterias (ANJL) and partner at Betlaw, said the measures fit a natural process of regulatory maturation. His point, stripped of the industry polish, is simple: Brazil is moving betting ads away from hype and toward a “this is entertainment, not a money machine” framework. That is the message operators, affiliates, and the PSPs supporting them now have to keep inside the rails.