Football clubs lead the charge against Brazil’s ban

• STF hears 34 participants on MP 1.394/2026 on Tuesday, with no ruling due.
• Clubs, ministries and trade bodies speak, but no individual operator was invited.
• Congress must vote by November 23, extendable once by 60 days.

Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) hears 34 participants on Tuesday, November 3, on MP 1.394/2026, the provisional measure that shut the country’s licensed fixed-odds betting market.

Football clubs, government ministries, industry associations and the Attorney General’s Office (AGU) will each make their case, but no ruling is due on the day.

Who gets the floor

Justice Luiz Fux’s original October 26 order named 26 participants. He added the Ministry of Sport and the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) on October 27, BNLData reported, then six more on Sunday, November 1.

The latest additions came at the AGU’s request. They are the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the Brazilian Supermarkets Association (Abras), the Brazilian Paralympic Committee, players’ federation Fenapaf and Grêmio.

The AGU had argued the list leaned heavily toward sport and betting. According to SBT News, clubs and betting companies made up 17 of the original 26. The AGU also proposed churches, banks and consumer bodies, iGaming Business reported, but none were added.

Each participant gets ten minutes under the STF schedule. Football dominates the morning. Flamengo opens at 10:10, followed by nine more clubs including Corinthians, São Paulo and Fluminense, then the CBF and the COB.

The afternoon belongs to the state and the trade. The AGU speaks at 14:00, followed by the finance and sports ministries, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and industry bodies ANJL and IBJR.

No individual operator was invited, so the licensed market’s case rests on its associations.

What the court can decide

Tuesday is about gathering evidence. Fux called the hearing instead of ruling on the injunction ANJL and IBJR seek in ADI 8.027. They want the ban suspended or, failing that, at least six months for licensed operators to wind down.

Fux has set no date to decide. His order also feeds three other challenges to the MP and three older cases against Law 14.790/2023, the statute behind the licensed regime.

His record matters for anyone pricing in a court win. Granting the AGU request, he wrote that the court already knows betting’s social harms and has used them in his own votes, SBT News reported. In August, he voted to keep running land-based games of chance a criminal offense.

Where the money sits

Clubs bring the sharpest numbers. Top-flight teams earned R$1.03bn from betting sponsorship in 2025, according to economist Cesar Grafietti’s Relatório Convocados, cited by UOL.

Operators and suppliers are already absorbing the shock. Entain’s Brazil net gaming revenue fell 36% in Q3, from a market it had expected to supply about 5% of its 2026 online NGR. Evolution has temporarily closed its Brazil studio.

Lower-court routes have narrowed too. Stake’s injunction lasted 24 hours before a federal appeals court suspended it.

Both sides will fight over channelization. ANJL president Plínio Lemos Jorge has cited more than 30,000 active unauthorized sites. The presidency’s communications office says 16,627 illegal sites were referred for blocking between September 25 and October 9.

Congress holds the clock

The Congress tracking page sets November 23 as the deliberation deadline. From November 9, the MP locks the agenda of the house where it sits. The deadline can be extended once by 60 days, and the year-end recess stops the count.

The joint committee that must review the measure was still awaiting installation in the latest updates. Most of the 99 amendments tabled would keep sports betting and drop online casino.

How it could end

A sports-only compromise is where most amendments point. It would still face a government led by Lula, re-elected last week, who said before the runoff that betting would not return.

A court suspension remains possible but has no timetable. Any solo decision by Fux would go to the full court, usually in a week-long virtual session.

A lapse would not restore the old market either. Acts under an expired MP stay valid unless Congress regulates their effects within 60 days, so extinguished authorizations would not return automatically. The challenges against the MP could also be declared moot.

Licensed operators remain offline in the meantime. Tuesday will show which arguments Fux takes seriously before either the court or Congress moves.