Brazil’s Ministry of Finance has published 582 documents totalling 2,240 processed pages that set out how 85 companies won authorisation to run fixed-odds betting in the country. The files went live on 12 August 2026 and are the first tranche of an archive the ministry says will eventually exceed 25,000 documents.
The material comes from the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA), the unit inside the finance ministry that licenses and supervises the market. It sits on a dedicated active transparency portal reached from the ministry’s homepage under the banner “Transparência Ativa: Processos de Autorização de Apostas de Quota Fixa”, which also lists the authorised operators and their administrative case numbers.
What the first tranche contains
Phase one covers five categories of technical assessment produced by SPA staff while reviewing each application.
The legal qualification opinion tests whether the applicant met the corporate and legal requirements of the licensing regime. The suitability opinion assesses the integrity of controlling shareholders and administrators. A third opinion examines the origin of the funds behind the application, the applicant’s financial capacity and its anti-money laundering controls. A fourth confirms payment of the concession fee. The final analysis report consolidates the other four and states the basis on which the authorisation was granted or refused.
Together the five documents amount to the paper trail behind every licence issued so far. Under Law 14,790/2023, operators paid a R$30m grant fee for a five-year authorisation covering up to three brands, and the suitability and source-of-funds tests were the parts of the process that drew the most scrutiny from lawmakers and from the market itself.
Redactions and the phased rollout
The ministry is releasing the archive in stages rather than at once. It says personal data, legally protected commercial information and other restricted material are removed or anonymised before publication, under Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD) and the access to information framework. The 2,240 pages already online are described as treated pages, meaning they have been through that review.
No completion date has been given for the remaining phases. The ministry has said only that further documents covering how each authorisation was decided will follow gradually.
The pledge behind the release
The publication follows a commitment made in June 2026 by Finance Minister Dario Durigan, who took over the ministry in March, that the authorisation files would be opened up.
“This government is not a government of secrecy, it is not a government that intends to keep information and omit information from people,” Durigan said in June, in remarks translated from Portuguese.
The ministry framed the August release in the same terms, calling it a way to guarantee transparency over decisions that granted market access to the operators now competing for Brazilian players.
A regulator under pressure on several fronts
The disclosure lands in the middle of a contested period for the regulated market. SPA suspended Pixbet and ordered player refunds over compliance failures earlier in August, a reminder that authorisation is not the end of the supervisory process.
The legal foundation of the regime is also unsettled. The Supreme Federal Court (STF) suspended its gambling case in August with a ruling due in November on whether the 2023 betting law is constitutional. In Congress, a bill to ban online casino games remains live, and lawmakers returned from recess with the measure still on the agenda.
Opening the licensing files gives critics of the market a documented record to work from, and gives licensed operators a documented record of the standards they were held to. Both sides of that argument have been running on assertion rather than paperwork.
What to watch next
The immediate question is how quickly the remaining 23,000 or so documents appear and whether later phases include the refused and abandoned applications rather than only the approvals. Compliance teams will also be reading the published opinions for what SPA treated as sufficient evidence on source of funds and shareholder suitability, since those criteria apply to every future licence request and to any transfer of control in the existing market. The STF ruling in November will decide the ground the whole archive stands on.
Source: Ministry of Finance
