Brazil’s federal government has finalised a package of restrictions for licensed betting operators, including a mandatory five-second interval between bets and a ban on autoplay, in the same week that Supreme Federal Court (STF) rapporteur Luiz Fux voted to keep the exploitation of games of chance a criminal offence.
The text is with the Ministry of Finance for technical review and is expected to be published next week, according to Folha de S. Paulo. It follows the advertising and marketing limits that took effect in July, and arrives 19 months after Brazil’s regulated market opened on 1 January 2025.
What the new rules cover
The measures backed by the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) target the mechanics of the betting interface rather than the products themselves.
Reported provisions include a minimum five-second gap between bets, a prohibition on automatic betting, and bans on countdown timers and sound effects such as falling coins used to prompt further wagering. Operators would also be barred from pre-selecting deposit or stake amounts on their screens, from making withdrawals difficult, and from using promotions to persuade customers to leave funds on account. Winner rankings and content presenting betting as a matter of skill or study would be prohibited.
The stated purpose is to force a pause before a customer stakes again, particularly after a loss.
The text has been discussed between the office of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the SPA, the National Secretariat for Digital Rights (SEDIGI), the Consumer Protection Secretariat (Senacon), the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, and the Secretariat for Social Communication (SECOM). Sector representatives were shown the measures at a meeting with those bodies on Tuesday 4 August.
None of it binds operators yet. The text has not been published in the Diário Oficial, and the adaptation period will be set within the text itself, so licensees have no compliance deadline to work to until it appears. Brazilian reporting has described the instrument as both a decree and an interministerial ordinance covering design and user experience. If it is an ordinance, it does not pass through Congress and can take effect shortly after signature.
Tax pressure builds alongside compliance costs
The measures land on a licensed sector already absorbing a rising tax bill. The Senate agreed to raise the levy on gross gaming revenue (GGR) from 12% to 18% by 2028, and the Workers’ Party (PT) government wants fixed-odds betting brought into the Tax Reform programme due to take effect in 2027, which would place operators under the new Selective Tax created for products carrying addiction risk.
Congress has separately removed sign-up offers and incentives since the market launched. Bill PL 2,258/2026, tabled on 7 May, would ban online casino games outright, and a further PT bill targets fixed-odds betting. Lula has argued since the market opened that online betting licences damage low-income households.
Brazil generated around $7bn in GGR in its first regulated year, which is what makes the sequencing awkward for licensees: the cost base is being reset while the legal status of the wider gambling sector is unresolved.
Fux votes to uphold the 1941 criminal ban
The court case is narrower than it has been reported. The STF is not ruling on Decree-Law 9,215/1946, the 1946 instrument that closed Brazil’s casinos. It is deciding whether Article 50 of the Penal Contraventions Law, Decree-Law 3,688/1941, was received by the 1988 Constitution. That article punishes anyone who establishes or exploits games of chance in a public place with three months to one year of detention.
The case is Extraordinary Appeal 966,177, registered as Theme 924 with general repercussion, meaning the thesis fixed will bind lower courts. It will settle 2,728 suspended cases. It reached the STF on an appeal by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio Grande do Sul against a state appellate panel that had ruled Article 50 incompatible with free enterprise and individual autonomy.
Oral arguments ran on Wednesday 5 August, with Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet defending the criminal penalty. Fux began reading his vote the same day and concluded it on Thursday 6 August, voting to allow the prosecutor’s appeal.
He rejected the argument that the ban rests on moral or religious grounds, holding that Article 50 protects health, property and individual autonomy, and that there is no fundamental right to operate games of chance. He said the industry profits from bettors’ difficulty in measuring risk and uses technological and psychological mechanisms to extend play after successive losses, including artificial intelligence to map profiles and target personalised prompts. He also cited reach among children and adolescents.
“It is a blasphemy to speak of autonomy of the will. There is no autonomy of the will here. The will is not the bettor’s.”
Fux proposed the thesis that Article 50 of the Penal Contraventions Law was received by the 1988 Constitution.
Dino’s proposed conditions are the operator risk
Justice Flávio Dino agreed the article is valid, then went further. He argued the STF should also set constitutional parameters for the betting modalities authorised by special legislation, lotteries and online bets included, on the basis that legislative exceptions cannot be open-ended.
“These exceptions do not mean anything goes.”
His suggested minimum requirements for any future authorising law would ring-fence part of gambling tax revenue for the public health system for the prevention and treatment of gambling addiction, impose integrity mechanisms against result manipulation, require proof of corporate probity for licensees, restrict advertising aimed at minors and extend warning obligations to digital influencers, ban algorithms designed to induce compulsive behaviour, create a public platform to identify problem gamblers and limit their access, and mandate permanent self-exclusion tools.
“It does not seem to me that we can, at this point, when dealing with the world of gambling, treat jogo do bicho, the little tiger, the little lion, whatever it may be, with rigour and ignore this dragon, which are the perverse games of the bets.”
Fux objected that this exceeds the scope of the appeal and pre-empts the separate actions on betting regulation, saying the court should stay within the boundaries of general repercussion. Dino then requested vista, suspending the judgment with no date set for its return.
Justice Dias Toffoli signalled a different concern during the session, warning that an outright prohibition would push activity into clandestine platforms and weaken state control.
Several related cases remain pending, including ADPF 1,212 on municipal lottery powers, ACO 3,696 on the territorial reach of state-licensed betting, and ADI 7,971 challenging Rio Grande do Sul’s restrictions on betting advertising. Court president Edson Fachin is expected to schedule them in the second half of 2026.
What is actually in force
Only one part of the current package binds operators today: the advertising and marketing limits published in July. The interface rules are unpublished. The GGR increase phases in to 2028 and the Selective Tax inclusion depends on the Tax Reform taking effect in 2027. PL 2,258/2026 has not been voted. The STF judgment is suspended with no thesis fixed and no return date, and the 2,728 cases stay on hold.
For licensees, the immediate exposure is the SPA text and the 2027 tax change. The open question is what Dino brings back with his vista. If the STF fixes constitutional minimums for authorised betting, those conditions apply to whatever Congress passes, and the political bargaining over the Bets framework ahead of October’s general election would run inside limits the court has already set.
Source: Supremo Tribunal Federal
