Gilmar Mendes-Backed Postdoctoral Research Says Regulation Is the Right Tool for Betting Externalities in Brazil

Pietro Cardia Lorenzoni, lawyer for the Associação Nacional de Jogos e Loterias (ANJL), defended a postdoctoral thesis at IDP in Brasília arguing that quality regulation is the best way to deal with the negative externalities of fixed-odds betting. For PSPs, acquirers, and operators in Brazil, the timing matters: the thesis landed three weeks after Medida Provisória nº 1.394/2026 shut down fixed-odds betting and revoked federal authorizations.

1. The defense took place on Wednesday, 14, at the Instituto Brasileiro de Ensino, Desenvolvimento e Pesquisa (IDP) in Brasília. The research, titled “Regulation and Constitutional Jurisdiction: analysis and hermeneutic proposals on legislation, federal regulation and jurisprudence of the fixed-odds lottery betting modality”, was approved with a recommendation for publication.
2. The work was supervised by professor and Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Gilmar Mendes, who also chaired the examining board. The other examiners were João Paulo Bachur, from IDP, and Plínio Lemos Jorge, from Uninove-SP. In other words: this is not just an academic exercise floating in the ether; it is tied directly to the constitutional fight now sitting in the STF.
3. The thesis lands against the backdrop of Medida Provisória nº 1.394/2026, published on 25 September, which banned fixed-odds betting and extinguished the federal authorizations granted to operators. The constitutionality of both the MP and Brazil’s betting framework is under discussion at the STF, and the research addresses the cases pending before the court.
4. Lorenzoni told BNLData that the 1h30 defense covered “the mistakes and successes of regulation,” and that he argued negative sector externalities should be addressed with quality regulation, while also highlighting the problems of the illegal market after MPV 1394. That point matters for anyone trying to model channelization — the migration of demand from the illegal market to the supervised market.
5. Structurally, the research traces the legal path from Lei 13.756/2018 to Lei 14.790/2023, then moves through regulation, enforcement, advertising, taxation, supplier-chain oversight, and the evolution of the regulatory agenda. It also reviews STF jurisprudence, including ADIs nº 7.721, nº 7.723 and nº 7.749, which challenge the framework, plus ADI nº 8.027, which challenges Medida Provisória nº 1.394/2026.

For high-risk payment players, the signal is straightforward: Brazil’s betting framework is no longer just a licensing or tax question. It is now a constitutional one, with live litigation, a federal measure that revoked authorizations, and a formal academic defense arguing that regulation — not prohibition — is the cleaner way to manage the sector’s spillovers.