Brazil Senate Panel Advances Bill to Strip Bets of Ads, Sponsorship

A committee of Brazil’s Federal Senate approved a bill on 2 September 2026, that would impose a near-total ban on advertising and sponsorship by licensed fixed-odds betting operators and online gaming companies, and approved an urgency request to speed its passage.

The Science, Technology, Innovation and Information Technology Committee, known as the CCT, backed the proposal at an extraordinary meeting. The bill was filed on 19 Mei 2026, by Senator Damares Alves with six co-authors: senators Izalci Lucas, Hamilton Mourão, Marcos Pontes, Teresa Leitão, Humberto Costa and Otto Alencar. It amends Brazil’s Bets Law, the statute enacted on 29 Desember 2023, that regulates fixed-odds betting and online games, and is framed around protecting mental health, consumers and the family economy, with an emphasis on harm prevention and reduction.

Senator Alessandro Vieira served as rapporteur and presented the committee with a substitute text, which the CCT adopted as its favorable opinion. Vieira described the initiative as suprapartisan, saying it arises from society’s current understanding of the scale of harm caused by so-called bets.

The approval came one day after the CCT held a public hearing on the bill, at which representatives of the government and the betting sector presented divergent positions on the proposed measures.

Advertising and Promotions Barred

The approved text prohibits commercial communication, direct or indirect, for bets on radio and television, in newspapers and magazines, on outdoor media, streaming services, podcasts, social networks, video platforms, applications, websites, blogs, forums and search engines. The restriction also reaches instant messages, SMS, email, push notifications, automatically targeted advertising, remarketing to users who have already had contact with the content, and profiling based on user behavior.

Advertising inside video games and esports, on sports uniforms and equipment, on public transport and through affiliates, tipsters, odds comparators and other paid intermediaries would also be banned. Bonuses, promotional credits, free bets, cashback, free spins, rewards and loyalty programs used to encourage joining, remaining on or returning to betting platforms would be prohibited, as would messages presenting betting as risk-free, a source of income, a financial solution, a guaranteed method or a way to recover losses.

Strictly institutional communication on an authorized operator’s own official channels would remain permitted, limited to company identification, official channels, access rules, self-exclusion and blocking mechanisms and mandatory warnings. Those channels could carry no promises of winnings, bonuses, invitations to bet, boosted content or features designed to attract and retain user attention, and operators would answer for the acts of paid or incentivized affiliates, agencies, influencers and other third parties.

Sponsorship Prohibition and Transition

Sponsorship by betting companies would be prohibited for clubs and other sporting entities, federations, leagues, competitions, sports broadcasts, cultural events, concerts, educational and social projects, philanthropic entities, civil society organizations, parties, candidates and election campaigns, as well as digital influencers, athletes, artists and celebrities. The ban covers brand exposure, naming rights, licensing, ambassador agreements and other forms of promotional association.

Existing sponsorship contracts would have a 24-month period for adaptation or termination. New, renewed or extended contracts would be admitted only where the contract term ends within that window. Sponsorship actions involving children and adolescents, schools and youth sports categories would be prohibited, and betting companies would be barred from associating their brands with campaigns or projects on mental health, suicide prevention, financial education, gambling-disorder treatment, social assistance, over-indebtedness prevention or protection of vulnerable families.

Player Protection and Risk Classification

Operators would be forbidden from using the data of self-excluded people, those in treatment or those who have requested a marketing block to try to reactivate them. Repeated or intrusive messages and offers directed at users who have reduced their playing frequency, recorded relevant losses, triggered limits or shown signs of risky behavior would be prohibited, as would exploiting situations of economic crisis, unemployment, indebtedness, emotional suffering, grief, anxiety, depression or loneliness to acquire, retain or reactivate bettors.

Operators would have to maintain permanent age-verification, self-exclusion, voluntary time and stake-limit mechanisms and information on each user’s own gambling behavior, with self-exclusion taking effect across all authorized operators. Betting through credit would be banned, along with predictive models identifying moments of greater vulnerability and platform design features that make it harder to consciously stop, leave the service or activate limits and blocks.

Products offered to the public would undergo prior assessment by a federal executive body to be defined by regulation. Products classed as high risk would face specific harm-reduction measures, while those classed as excessive risk could not be offered at all — a category covering products with results determined by random mechanisms, continuous cycles and variable rewards, such as roulette, slot machines, crash games and simulated virtual sports.

Enforcement, New Crime and Revolving Door

App stores, digital platforms, hosting services and media intermediaries would have to remove irregular promotions and campaigns after notification by the competent authority, with the notice required to identify the flagged content clearly and specifically and with the right of response guaranteed. Journalistic, academic, parliamentary, artistic and opinion content is expressly preserved. The bill also bars betting companies and linked businesses from acquiring, licensing or exploiting rights to sporting events held in Brazil, and folds the new infractions into the Bets Law’s existing sanctions system, which provides for fines of up to R$2 billion.

Vieira’s substitute creates the crime of promoting an unauthorized betting operator, punishable by one to five years in prison, with the sentence increased by one-sixth to two-thirds when the promotion is carried out by a digital influencer, athlete or well-known public figure. The rapporteur also added a 24-month quarantine in both directions: people who have held a relevant tie to an operator or market-representative entity would be blocked from certain regulatory functions, and officials leaving the regulator would face the same wait before joining the private sector.

At the 1 September 2026, public hearing, Damares Alves criticized the betting sector’s presentation of its products, saying the industry uses romanticized terminology:

“They put it in such a romantic way: ‘Responsible gaming.’ It is not responsible gaming; it is gambling, it is responsible loss.”

Vieira told the hearing that voting on the matter was urgent for the country and said he expected to present a first version of his report the following day. The legislative record shows the bill now moves to the Senate’s Social Affairs Committee, which will decide the matter in terminative proceedings, while the urgency request approved by the CCT goes to the Board of Directors for deliberation.