Brazil’s Ministry of Sports says federal betting ban has mooted ANJL challenge to Minas Gerais ad decree

The Ministry of Sports told Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court that Provisional Measure No. 1.394/2026, which banned fixed-odds betting in the country, has emptied out the legal basis of ANJL’s challenge to Minas Gerais Decree No. 49.279/2026. For payment providers and operators, the practical point is simple: once the federal rule covers the whole market, the dispute over a state-level ad ban becomes a different case.

1. The ministry’s position appears in Informações No. 00141/2026 from its legal department, CONJUR/MESP, which BNLData said it reviewed. The document was signed on 13 October and approved the next day by Guilherme Assunção Fagundes, the ministry’s legal counsel.
2. The case is ADI 8.014, reported by Justice Flávio Dino. The claimant is the Associação Nacional de Jogos e Loterias (ANJL), represented by attorneys Pietro Cardia Lorenzoni and Bernardo Cavalcanti Freire.
3. Minas Gerais Decree No. 49.279, published in the State Official Gazette on 21 August 2026, prohibits advertising, promotion, commercial sponsorship, and publicity by fixed-odds betting operators and adult-content platforms on state-owned property and at events promoted or supported by the Minas Gerais Executive Branch. It also restricts the use of public funds for those activities and repeals the provision in the Minas Gerais State Lottery (Lemg) regulation that had included fixed-odds betting among state lottery modalities.
4. ANJL argues that the decree intrudes on the federal government’s exclusive power to legislate on lotteries and commercial advertising under Article 22, items XX and XXIX of the Constitution, violates legality by regulating by subordinate act what should be set by law, and breaches free competition and equality. The association says the measure targets operators authorized by the Ministry of Finance while state operators could still run the same advertising practices. It asked for a full precautionary suspension of the decree or, alternatively, of Articles 1 and 3, plus an interpretation that would exclude federally authorized operators from its reach.
5. For the Ministry of Sports, the key point is that the alleged unequal treatment between federal and state operators no longer exists. Its technical units concluded that the federal ban changes the entire legal framework, because both groups are now prohibited from advertising and their authorizations are being extinguished. The ministry also notes, however, that Provisional Measure No. 1.394/2026 still depends on Congress.

For high-risk PSPs, this is the sort of procedural shift that matters more than the headline fight itself: a state advertising restriction can look like a local compliance issue, until a federal measure makes the underlying challenge harder to sustain and changes the risk map for operators and their payment partners at the same time.