AGU asks Brazil’s Supreme Court for the debate it did not hold before banning fixed-odds betting

Brazil’s federal government has now asked the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to do the consultation process it skipped before issuing Provisional Measure No. 1.394/2026, which effectively shut down fixed-odds betting platforms. For high-risk payments providers, the point is simple: when a market is turned off first and argued about later, payout flows, sponsorships, and merchant exposure can become collateral damage before the legal fight is even heard.

1. The petition was filed in ADI 7721 by the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), asking Justice Luiz Fux to reject the injunction requests against the measure. The AGU also wants the Prosecutor General’s Office heard within 72 hours and says a new public hearing on the issue should be considered.
2. The filing was signed by Attorney General Jorge Messias at 19:40 on Monday (5), with a little more than four hours left before the 23:59 deadline for platform shutdown. The ANJL had argued that taking sites offline, unwinding bets, and canceling sponsorships would create irreversible effects.
3. According to BNLData, the practical effect of the request is clear: it pushes the injunction decision further out while the ban hardens into a fait accompli. In other words, the legal process can continue after the regulated market has already been switched off.
4. The AGU says a new hearing is justified by the “sensitivity” of the topic and the need to “update the record” after the November 2024 hearing. That sounds procedural, except the whole point of the criticism is that the hearing came after the decision, not before it.
5. The government says “civil society was heard before the decision” and lists CNBB, IECLB, CNI, Febraban, Dieese, CNC, and Idec. Notice who is missing from that list: operators, industry associations, football clubs, broadcasters, and sports entities — the people who actually signed the checks and operated under supervision of the SPA-MF, the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting at the Ministry of Finance.

For context, operators paid a R$ 30 million authorization fee to enter the regulated market. That matters because in high-risk verticals, licensing cost is not just a compliance line item; it is a sunk bet on regulatory continuity, and this case shows how fast that bet can be repriced by politics and court procedure.