Brazil’s presidential race splits over bets after Lula’s provisional measure

Brazil’s Medida Provisional 1.394/2026 has put the regulated fixed-odds betting market on pause by banning exploitation, offering, intermediation, and advertising of bets in Brazil, including sports betting and online games. For PSPs and operators, the important part is not the campaign theater — it’s that the government is now testing whether the regulated model it built over the past few years survives politically.

1. The measure takes effect immediately after publication, which is the whole point of using a Medida Provisional. But it still needs to be reviewed and approved by the National Congress if it is to remain in force permanently. In other words, the market is suspended first and litigated later, which is not a comfortable order of operations for anyone holding merchant risk or acquisition exposure.
2. Lula’s government justified the move mainly by pointing to debt, public health, and the need to fight the illegal betting market. That is a familiar political script, but the practical effect for iGaming is more pointed: it breaks with the regulated model developed under the same government in recent years.
3. The crackdown has also become part of Lula’s campaign message, with bets tied to debt problems and to Juego del Tigrinho. For payment providers, that matters because once betting stops being framed as a regulated vertical and starts being treated as a political liability, the compliance conversation gets a lot sharper very quickly.
4. Among the main candidates, Flávio Bolsonaro of the PL has taken the clearest split position. He says he is in favor of shutting down online casinos and formats such as Juego del Tigrinho, but he has left the door open for sports betting sites and defended a distinction between the two.
5. After the MP was announced, Flávio called the measure “populist, hypocritical and electoralist” and criticized the timing ahead of elections, according to reports from Folha de S.Paulo and Agência Estado. He also criticized the fact that the government regulated online betting before moving to prohibit it, and in another statement called Lula the “father of Tigrinho,” referring to the expansion of online games during the regulated period.
6. Romeu Zema of Novo also criticized Lula’s decision, but his position is not the same as Flávio Bolsonaro’s. Speaking during a campaign event in Varginha, Zema questioned why the government waited until the last days before the election to adopt a measure of this size, and said: “Why was bets approved at that time? Just to raise revenue, even at the cost of the financial destruction of the poorest people?” He called the decision an “electoral aberration.”

For high-risk operators, the key distinction here is between sports betting and online casino-style products. Brazil’s political debate is no longer just about whether betting should be regulated; it is now about which parts of the vertical can survive politically, and which ones are easiest to turn into campaign targets.