Brazil’s President Lula pledges outright online betting ban

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will declare an outright ban on Brazil’s Bets Law, today Friday, 25 September, as an election pledge kept by the Workers Party (PT) government. 

Yesterday, the news sources of O Globo and Folha de S.Paulo, reported that Lula had confirmed his decision in a meeting of economic ministers in São Paulo. 

The decision comes just nine days before Brazilians vote in the first round of the presidential election on 4 October. If no candidate wins outright, the two leading candidates will advance to the presidential runoff.

The meeting in Sao Paulo, was scheduled for Lula and PT officials to present new economic measures to protect Brazilian families and strengthen budget households against inflation.

Press reports state that the meeting had no agenda to debate the Bets Law, the regulatory framework that has governed Brazil’s online gambling market since 1 January 2025.

The PT government is citing mounting evidence of financial distress. 

Ministers believe that the Bets Law has directly contributed to an estimated 1.8 million Brazilians into debt last year, disproportionately harming vulnerable households dependent on welfare programmes.

These claims have been contested by Brazilian trade bodies. The Central Bank, while not dismissing betting as a source of indebtedness, has instead pointed to increasing credit card use as the main driver of Brazilians’ debt.

This week, Brazilian football clubs urged Lula to reconsider a ban, warning that the loss of betting sponsorships would damage their finances. A joint statement was backed by clubs including Corinthians, which Lula supports, Palmeiras, São Paulo, Santos, Flamengo, Fluminense, Botafogo, Vasco and Cruzeiro.

Lula rejected their appeal, arguing that Brazilian football could survive without betting funds and that football leagues had developed a toxic relationship with gambling operators.

Operators’ political options are becoming more and more limited. The other main candidate in October’s elections, Liberal Party leader Flavia Bolasaro, has also pledged to ban online casinos if elected.

Lula’s all out war on betting

The President’s move marks yet another escalation of his rhetoric against the regulated betting space. Lula has described himself as “no friend” of the industry, and has been eyeing up restrictions such as an advertising clampdown for some time.

This turned into a pledge for a new “drastic measure” earlier this month, later revealed as a ban on online casinos with more intense restrictions on online betting. 

This has now morphed yet again into a complete reversal of 2024’s Bets Law, a law Lula himself gave his presidential seal-of-approval to, despite personal misgivings, leading to the launch of the regulated market on 1 January 2025.

According to local reports, Lula decided that an outright ban on all online betting and gaming was necessary to “nip the problem in the bud” – the problem being concerns for the wellbeing of vulnerable members of Brazilian society, particularly those facing growing indebtedness.

The President is lumping the betting ban with other key electoral promises such as the planned elimination of the “Blushina tax” on low-value imported goods and a planned 15% increase in the Bolsa Familia welfare programme.

To state the obvious, this is bad news for Brazilian bookmakers. The market has grown exponentially since January 2025, with nearly 200 authorised websites active.

The market is home to a number of international brands, with Greece’s Betano and Romania’s Superbet partially dominant players. UK firm Entain also stated that it saw good progress on the horizon for its Sportingbet brand in Brazil during H1 earnings earlier this year.

A ban on betting will deal a big financial blow to these companies. But it will also likely deal a blow to the Brazilian treasury. According to the Federal Revenue Service, regulated Brazilian betting firms paid R$8.7bn (£1.2bn) between January-July 2026.

Though policymakers from the UK to Brazil have clearly grown tired of the black market argument, it stands to reason that the lion’s share of this revenue will return to the black and grey markets that existed in Brazil prior to 2025, and continue to exist and compete with the regulated market today.

As stands, Three bills have been submitted to Congress that would replace or substantially restrict Brazil’s current Bets Law. PL 2,972/2026 proposes an outright ban on fixed-odds betting and would repeal the law. PL 4,977/2026 would prohibit betting advertising and sports sponsorship while allowing existing operator licences to expire.

PL 2,470/2026 takes a narrower approach, targeting high-risk online casino games and restricting advertising and sponsorship.

Post election, negotiations and bargaining will see how a new gambling regime will take shape in Brazil, and which political blocs engineer the framework. As such, Friday 24 September 2026 is the death sentence of Bets, as an unloved regime that failed to survive the partizan fallout of Brazilian politics

Article co-authored with Ted Menmuir