Lula signs provisional ban on fixed-odds sports betting ahead of first-round vote
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed an executive order banning fixed-odds sports betting in Brazil just over a week before the first round of the presidential election, the government announced on Friday.
The measure ends the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting and bars new deposits into accounts, while the administration has drafted a bill to create criminal offences tied to those activities, including promoting them and using personal data to solicit punters. The order takes immediate effect but the government described further legislative steps to follow.
Addressing journalists in São Paulo, Lula said: “I made the decision to take a hard, drastic and necessary measure,” and added, “It’s like cancer, you take out the tumour, or the tumour will kill us.” He had also criticised the betting industry earlier this week at the United Nations general assembly, accusing it of “transforming addiction into profit” and of “destroying homes.”
Polls cited by the reporting suggest the ban enjoys widespread public support, while Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula’s main rival in the upcoming election, accused the current leader of an “electoral measure”. The president has publicly pushed for restrictions on online betting since at least April when he called for a ban, and public backlash increased during the Fifa World Cup amid ubiquitous advertising and a surge in betting participation.
A 2025 study by the nonprofit Institute of Studies for Health Policies estimated betting and gambling cost Brazilian society 38.8bn reais annually, and the central bank estimated last year that Brazilians spend about 30bn reais on bets each month. That monthly figure, the central bank said, included spending by beneficiaries of the federal cash-transfer programme Bolsa Familia, which was blocked from betting platforms last year.
Legislative and regulatory moves have been uneven: lawmakers, including many from Flávio Bolsonaro’s Liberal party, struck down a Lula order to raise taxes on online betting and virtual casinos in October last year. Although gambling is illegal in Brazil, online betting was permitted starting in 2018 during the presidency of Michel Temer, a development the report says escalated under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro.
In December 2023 Lula signed a law to regulate and tax betting companies, and months later his administration blocked more than 2,000 online betting websites designated as irregular, including some linked to criminal organisations such as the First Capital Command from São Paulo and the Red Command of Rio de Janeiro. Business analysts cited in the report estimated revenues for sports betting, the model banned on Friday, at more than $4bn per year in Brazil; ahead of the move, several of the country’s main football clubs warned that betting firms had told them sponsorships would end immediately if a ban were imposed, a claim some social media users mocked.
The provisional executive order comes into force immediately but will need congressional approval within 120 days to remain in effect, and the government has set a deadline of 5 October for users of betting platforms to withdraw their funds.