Lula signs a ban on Brazil's online betting, nine days before the first round

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a ban on Friday afternoon in São Paulo and set Tuesday, October 6, as the day Brazil's betting sites go offline, two days after the first round of the presidential election. The market he is closing is one his own government built. A 2018 law opened the door to this betting, a 2023 law in his own presidency set the rules, and licensed sites began operating in January 2025.

The first round is on Sunday, October 4. In a Datafolha survey of 2,002 people on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 22 and 23, Lula led Senator Flávio Bolsonaro by 40% to 36% in that round and by 47% to 45% if the vote goes to a second round. A previous Datafolha poll, taken the week before, had those races at 39% to 36% and 46% to 44%. Speaking before the announcement, Pablo Ortellado, a professor of public policy management at the University of São Paulo, called a ban a drastic step Lula was taking because he believes it can win him the vote, and saw in it a certain desperation in the face of the polls.

On Friday Lula also signed a second provisional measure, Desenrola 3.0. Under it the government would buy household debts that are two to four and a half years overdue, rather than leave families to negotiate with a bank. The Finance Ministry put the debts that qualify at 300 billion reais, and said it hoped to reach about half of that, 150 billion reais, at a 90% discount from the banks. "People used to have to go to a bank," Lula said. "Now the government is going to buy their debt."

Aides had put narrower options in front of him: ban only online casinos, limit the advertising, or shut fixed-odds sports bets as well. He shut the casinos and the sports bets together. A fixed-odds bet is one where the payout is set before the game.

The Finance Ministry put the operators' 2025 take, after prizes, at 37 billion reais. In the first half of 2025 it counted 17.7 million Brazilians placing these bets. A five-year permit cost 30 million reais, and the fees collected come to more than 2.5 billion reais.

In July, 82% of consumers told Brazil's national commerce confederation they had a debt coming due, the highest share in that survey's history. A federal audit found that in January 2025, 4.4 million of the 20.3 million families on Bolsa Família, the main cash-transfer program, sent money to betting sites.

"I decided to take the hard and drastic measure that is necessary," Lula said. "It is like cancer. Either you take out the tumor, or the tumor kills us."

"It is not right for us to spend what we do not have to try to win what does not exist," he said.

People can still withdraw until 11:59 p.m. Brasília time on Monday, October 5. Money left behind is to be reported to the banks on Wednesday, October 7, and Thursday, October 8, and returned from Friday, October 9, to Wednesday, October 14. Ads and sponsorship branding have to be gone by that Monday cutoff.

The ban can still lapse

What he signed is a provisional measure, a temporary law a president can put into force without waiting for Congress, and it begins only when it is published. Finance Minister Dario Durigan tied the freeze on new deposits to that publication, and the government said an extra edition of the official gazette would carry the text on Friday. Through Friday evening, accounts of the signing still described that edition as ahead of them. The freeze, and the 60 days, start only when it appears. Once the text is published, it lasts 60 days, and that term can be extended once, by another 60. Congress has to approve it inside that window or the ban lapses, and Congress is in recess for the election. Prison is not in the text he signed. A separate bill the government said it will send would make running these bets a crime, with four to six years in prison and a fine, and advertising them a crime, with two to four years. Those sentences are not in force.

The permit contracts do not say the state must repay the fee if it shuts the business, and the measure does not set a refund. Operators say they will ask a court for the fees and for the profits they expected to lose. Before the signing, Bernardo Cavalcanti Freire, legal adviser to the National Association of Games and Lotteries, put a preliminary estimate of those claims at up to 120 billion reais, based on the revenue the regulated market was projected to earn. If the state later makes an activity it authorized for a fee impossible to carry on, he said, it cannot ignore the financial consequences.

Since January 2025 the government has collected 15.6 billion reais from games and betting. Freire's association and the Brazilian Institute for Responsible Gaming say a ban does not end the betting. It ends the protection of the person who bets, and the demand moves to sites the state does not license. The consultancy LCA estimates that unlicensed operators take 38% to 44% of betting, down from 41% to 51% a year earlier. Operators have warned football clubs that sponsorship contracts may end. Those contracts ran above 1 billion reais last year.

Flutter Entertainment, owner of FanDuel, bought 56% of NSX, the company behind the Brazilian brand Betnacional, in May 2025 for about $350 million, and folded its Betfair business in Brazil into that company. Brazil accounted for $72 million of the $4,326 million in revenue Flutter reported for the quarter ended June 30, or 1.7%. Entain, another listed operator, said its Brazil revenue after payouts fell 25% in the first half once currency moves are stripped out. Flutter closed Friday at $83.23, up 1.6%, after touching $78.90, its lowest price in 52 weeks, on a day when Lula had already confirmed the signing that morning in Recife. At 7:53 p.m. Eastern, after the New York close, buyers were bidding $82.50 and sellers were asking $83.50, and the middle of that wide gap sat 0.3% under the close.

The sites are scheduled to go dark two days after the first round, and the Congress that has to approve the ban is in recess and has not voted.