Brazil Senate committee approves broad ad restrictions on bets, criminalizes promotion of illegal operators

The Senate’s Committee on Science, Technology, Innovation and Informatics (CCT) has approved a substitute bill that would sharply tighten Brazil’s rules on fixed-odds betting advertising, sponsorship, and product design. For regulated PSPs, the important bit is not the politics: if this text advances, it changes what can be marketed, where, and by whom, while also increasing the pressure on unlicensed “bets clandestinas.”

1. On Wednesday (2), the CCT approved Senator Alessandro Vieira’s substitute to Bill No. 2.470, of 2026, originally introduced by Senator Damares Alves and six other lawmakers. The substitute folds the new rules into Law 14.790/2023, Brazil’s current regulatory framework for the sector, rather than creating a separate regime.
2. The core change is a near-total ban on commercial communication for fixed-odds betting. The text would prohibit direct or indirect advertising across TV, radio, print, social media, streaming, programmatic advertising, gaming environments, and affiliate or tipster content. The only explicit carve-out is strictly institutional communication on the operator’s own channels — official website, app, logged-in areas, and customer service — with no profit promises, bonuses, or promotional language.
3. It also bans sponsorship deals with clubs, competitions, sports broadcasts, cultural events, social projects, and digital influencers. The only listed exceptions are sponsorship of mental health, suicide prevention, and financial education campaigns, and even there the operator’s brand cannot be exposed.
4. The substitute introduces product-risk categories: “high risk” and “excessive risk.” The latter would cover roulette, slot machines, crash games, and simulated virtual sports, and their offering would be prohibited. For operators, that is not a wording tweak; it is a direct line between product taxonomy and whether a vertical can be sold at all.
5. A new criminal offense, Article 48-A, would punish remunerated promotion of an unauthorized operator — the so-called “bets clandestinas” — with imprisonment from one to five years, plus an increase in penalty that was cut off in the source text. The bill also still has a long way to go: after the Senate, it must pass the Chamber of Deputies and then be signed, fully or partially vetoed, by the President. The committee also approved urgency, and the matter now moves to the Senate plenary; under the ordinary route, the next stop is the Social Affairs Committee (CAS), with terminal review.

For Brazil-facing payment providers, the practical question is straightforward: if this bill advances, the compliant market gets tighter on customer acquisition while the illegal market gets a fresh criminal hook for paid promotion. That combination tends to matter more for merchant onboarding and monitoring than the headline itself.