Brazil’s New Betting Ad Rules: What They Mean, and What They Don’t Fix
Brazil’s betting industry just got a lot more careful about how it talks to consumers. Two new federal ordinances, published within a week of each other in July 2026, are reshaping the rules around advertising for fixed-odds betting across the country: Ordinance SPA/MF No. 1.964/2026 and Interministerial Ordinance MF/SECOM/MJSP No. 73/2026.
Taken together, they represent the most direct regulatory intervention yet into how the sector markets itself. Our Director of Regulatory Affairs, Valter Delfraro Jr., sees the ordinances as a meaningful step forward, though not a complete fix.
Mandatory warnings hit every ad
Published on July 3 by the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets, Ordinance No. 1.964/2026 requires every betting advertisement in Brazil to carry standardized warning messages, including lines like “Betting can cause addiction”, “Betting makes you lose money”, and “A bet is not an investment”.
These aren’t small-print disclaimers. The warning must appear horizontally, in legible text, covering at least 10% of the ad’s surface area. The new legislation is clearly designed to ensure that consumers can’t scroll past a betting ad without being reminded of the risks involved.
A broader crackdown on how the industry communicates
Just a week later, on July 10, a second and wider-reaching ordinance landed, signed jointly by the Ministries of Finance, Justice and Public Security, and the Secretariat of Social Communication. It sets general rules for all betting advertising, marketing, and communication, and its provisions go well beyond warning labels:
Advertising that misleads consumers is now banned outright;
Experts and public figures are barred from endorsing bets on specific games;
Promotion of unauthorized, unlicensed operators is blocked;
Children, adolescents, and vulnerable groups get explicit special protection.
The upside regulators are aiming for
Delfraro Jr. doesn’t dispute the need for these measures. In a country where access to online betting keeps growing exponentially, ignoring the risks would be reckless.
“These ordinances hold companies and media agents accountable, protect consumers from deceptive practices, and bring real transparency to a market that moves billions of reais and draws in young people especially”, he says.
It’s also important to note that this newly implemented regulation aligns the sector with Brazil’s Consumer Protection Code, reinforcing a principle the industry has long claimed to support: responsible gambling.
Where the conversation stops short
The pushback comes on a different point: tighter advertising rules alone don’t solve the underlying problem. “Regulating a market is one thing. Censoring or banning it outright is another”, Delfraro Jr. points out. Betting already exists at scale in Brazil, and pretending otherwise just pushes a problem out of view rather than solving it.
The worry is that regulatory silence doesn’t make demand disappear. Betting will continue regardless, often migrating to illegal channels beyond the reach of any oversight, and a blanket ban approach risks betting becoming taboo on paper while continuing to grow in the shadows. Education, Valter argues, does more of the actual work than restriction. Teaching people about risk, personal finance, and addiction is a more durable solution than warning labels alone. This is already evident in countries that have invested in educational campaigns and responsible-gambling programs, successfully reducing rates of gambling addiction without shutting down their licensed markets.
The illegal market is the real danger
This is how it works in reality: squeeze the licensed sector too hard, and illegal operators fill the gap, exposing consumers to greater risk with none of the protections regulation was meant to provide.
Brazilians won’t stop betting, so the real question becomes whether it happens inside the law, with rules, transparency, and consumer protection, or gets pushed into informality, where none of that exists.
“There are only two real paths: a legal, regulated, supervised sector, or an illegal one with no oversight at all”, Delfraro Jr. concludes.
Ordinances No. 1.964/2026 and No. 73/2026 mark genuine progress in disciplining how betting is advertised and protecting consumers from deceptive marketing. But enforcement and warning labels only address part of the picture. Real progress means going further than banning or hiding the issue, it means educating and raising awareness, because staying silent only perpetuates ignorance.
