Brazil’s National Congress has extended the provisional measure that banned fixed-odds betting by a further 60 days, keeping the prohibition in force into March 2027 while lawmakers have yet to begin formally examining it.

The extension of Provisional Measure (MP) 1,394/2026 was signed by Senate and Congress president Davi Alcolumbre and published in the Official Gazette on Wednesday, 11 November, according to local trade reports. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the measure on 25 September, banning the operation, offer, intermediation and advertising of sports betting and online casino games with immediate effect.

Recess pushes the deadline back

Under Brazil’s constitution, a provisional measure has the force of law for 60 days, extendable once by another 60, and lapses unless Congress converts it into law within that window. The clock stops during the parliamentary recess, which runs from 22 December to 2 February. Senate legislative consultant Gilberto Guerzoni said that suspension means the betting MP will now remain valid until around 4 March 2027.

“In practice, a provisional measure, whatever it may be, including this one, has a deadline of 120 days from the date it is issued. However, when Congress enters recess, that deadline is suspended,” Guerzoni said, as reported by iGaming Brasil.

The extended timetable gives Congress more room, but the process has barely started. The mixed committee of deputies and senators that must report on the MP before floor votes in both houses has not yet been installed. Lawmakers approved an urgency request linked to the measure on Monday, 9 November.

Pressure on the ban is building on several fronts at once. Enforcement against the unlicensed market has continued in parallel, with the Ministry of Justice and Public Security this week targeting 348 social media influencers accused of promoting illegal betting, while federal courts have been asked to rule on individual operators’ attempts to keep trading.

Courts and Senate hearings

The ban remains under challenge at the Supreme Federal Court (STF), where four direct actions of unconstitutionality have been filed against the MP. Rapporteur Minister Luiz Fux, who has said betting should be prohibited, held a ten-hour public hearing on the challenges earlier this month. Separately, the Senate Economic Affairs Committee is preparing a public hearing on the economic and social impact of the ban at the request of Senator Veneziano Vital do Rêgo. No date has been set.

The government has argued that the regulatory and monitoring framework built under Law 14,790/2023 was not adequate to protect the public. Operators counter that shutting the licensed market leaves players exposed to unlicensed sites with no controls. The 85 federal licences issued under that framework, each costing R$30m, expired at the end of October, with no refund of fees.

What comes next

For international operators and suppliers that had built Brazilian businesses since the market opened in January 2025, the extension prolongs uncertainty rather than resolving it. Congress could still amend the measure, for example by restoring a narrower licensed regime, reject it, or let it lapse, while the STF has yet to rule on its constitutionality. With the committee still to be formed and the recess approaching, a decision on the future of Brazilian betting is now unlikely before February.

Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) has asked for the removal of 348 Instagram profiles belonging to influencers it says are promoting illegal betting, as the government widens its enforcement of the national ban on fixed-odds betting from websites to the social media accounts that drive traffic to them.

The ministry announced the action on 9 November. It said the profiles have a combined following of more than 150 million, with the largest single account counting 1.4 million followers.

The work was carried out by the ministry’s National Secretariat for Digital Rights (Sedigi) and National Public Security Secretariat (Senasp) through its Cyber Operations Laboratory (Ciberlab). The announcement describes takedown requests sent to the platforms. It did not say whether the profiles have been removed, and no fines were announced.

Pages, groups and sites

Alongside the influencer accounts, the ministry said it had identified 2,207 Facebook pages with a combined audience of 7.5 million, 18 Telegram groups with about 182,000 members and 998 websites in the same period.

Since the ban took effect on 25 September, the MJSP said it has identified more than 60,000 items. These comprise 51,611 websites, 6,596 Facebook pages reaching 34 million people, more than 900 Instagram profiles, 1,442 Telegram groups with 25.6 million members and 127 TikTok profiles. The cumulative total stood at 20,318 on 9 October, meaning it has roughly tripled in a month.

“It is not enough to take illegal betting sites offline if these platforms keep reaching the public through influencers and social media,” said Wellington César Lima e Silva, minister of justice and public security (translated from Portuguese).

Victor Fernandes, national secretary for digital rights, said the government needs to “cut off the promotion channels, especially the profiles that use their influence to draw consumers to prohibited services” (translated).

The ministry is also asking the public to report illegal betting promotion through the government’s Fala.BR channel. The full announcement is published in Portuguese on the ministry’s website.

Legal basis and court fight

The legal basis for the crackdown is Provisional Measure (MP) 1,394/2026 of 25 September, which prohibits operating, offering, intermediating and advertising fixed-odds betting and sets rules on player protection and refunds. Under Brazilian law a provisional measure has immediate force but must be considered by Congress.

The ban has faced a series of legal challenges. On 9 November, the same day as the MJSP announcement, Supreme Federal Court (STF) justice Luiz Fux suspended nationwide all court cases disputing the constitutionality of the MP until the STF gives a final ruling, according to a court statement. The order was issued in ADI 8027 at the request of the Prosecutor-General’s Office, and is pending confirmation by the full court.

Fux cited legal uncertainty created by lower-court rulings that had suspended the MP, and the risk of releasing an activity he described as harmful and of high social risk. The effect is to freeze those challenges and keep the ban in place. Fux had already signalled his position when the court heard the first challenge to the ban last week, saying bets should be banned.

The suspension also closes off the route several operators had used to win temporary relief, as seen when a federal appeals court reinstated the ban on CDA Gaming’s brands a day after granting it.

What comes next

Separately, the president of Brazil’s financial intelligence unit Coaf, Ricardo Saadi, said in an interview with Globo media that licensed operators had been filing the suspicious-transaction reports required of them, while illegal operators filed none, a point the formerly licensed industry has used to argue that prohibition will push activity out of sight.

Congress must still consider MP 1,394/2026, while the STF’s full court has yet to rule on its constitutionality. In the meantime, the government’s focus on influencers suggests enforcement will increasingly target marketing and payment channels rather than offshore sites that can be easily relaunched.

Switzerland’s intercantonal gambling regulator Gespa has said that youth protection in retail sports betting is “currently not working satisfactorily”, after test purchases found that minors were able to place bets at almost half of the lottery outlets visited, even as it gave the two state lottery companies a positive verdict on their online safeguards.

The findings are set out in Gespa’s 2025 evaluation report on player protection at Swisslos and Loterie Romande, which the regulator published on its news page on 2 November. The report confirms the results of a test-purchase exercise Gespa first disclosed in July, and its publication was delayed after both lottery companies challenged the regulator’s right to release it.

Minors placed bets in 47.5% of attempts

Blue Cross Switzerland carried out 200 test purchases on Gespa’s behalf in 2025: 100 at Loterie Romande points of sale in the canton of Vaud and 100 at Swisslos outlets in the canton of Zurich, covering both urban and rural or suburban locations. Only retail sports betting was tested, meaning Swisslos’s Sporttip and Loterie Romande’s JouezSport, not lottery draw games.

Minors succeeded in placing a bet in 47.5% of cases, and in 44.5% of purchases there was no age check at all. The failure rate was 56% at the Swisslos outlets in Zurich and 39% at the Loterie Romande outlets in Vaud.

Self-service terminals performed worse than staffed counters. Two-thirds (66.7%) of attempts made at terminals succeeded, compared with 44.5% where staff were involved.

Gespa cautioned that the sample was small and targeted rather than representative, so the results cannot be generalised. It was the first test-purchase exercise the regulator itself had commissioned, so there are no earlier Gespa figures to compare against.

Online controls judged effective

By contrast, Gespa again rated the lottery companies’ online player protection as positive for 2025, singling out mandatory capped loss limits as the most effective measure. It welcomed Swisslos’s decision in March 2026 to cut the maximum Sporttip loss limit to CHF 1,000 for players aged 18 to 21.

The regulator noted, however, that more than three-quarters of the two companies’ gross gaming revenue still comes from land-based channels, where measures are harder both to enforce and to assess.

“The lottery companies are required to implement the existing regulations consistently and, where necessary, to take additional measures,” Gespa said in its July statement on the test purchases (translated from German).

Operators respond

Both companies have taken steps since the tests. According to Gespa, these include a “Guess the Age” training tool introduced in 2026, a campaign asking retail staff to check identification for anyone who appears to be aged 18 to 25, and U18 and U25 stickers at points of sale. ID scanners on self-service terminals are under discussion.

Loterie Romande, whose JouezSport sportsbook moved onto OpenBet technology in October, ran 832 test purchases of its own in 2025, with failing outlets given extra training and retested. Swisslos carried out its first mystery shopping exercise in January 2025 across five urban areas.

Publication dispute

Swisslos and Loterie Romande contested Gespa’s right to publish the evaluation and asked for a formal, appealable decision, according to Swiss newspapers Blick and Beobachter. Gespa ruled that publication was lawful. The companies did not appeal, making the ruling final, but the dispute held up release by several weeks.

Gespa said it will commission further test purchases “in the foreseeable future” and reserves the right to order additional binding measures if the findings are confirmed. The full evaluation report is available in German on the regulator’s website.