After banning betting through an executive order, the Attorney General's Office (AGU) asks the Supreme Court to hold the debate that the government failed to do.
The federal government has decided to propose to the Supreme Federal Court the debate that it did not promote before prohibiting fixed-odds betting. In a statement presented in ADI 7721, the Attorney General's Office asks Minister Luiz Fux to reject the precautionary measures against Provisional Measure No. 1.394/2026. It also requests that the Attorney General of the Republic be heard within 72 hours and that the holding of a new public hearing on the subject be evaluated.
The document was signed by the Attorney General of the Union, Jorge Messias, at 19:40 pm on Monday (5). There were just over four hours left until 23:59 pm, the deadline for the platforms' operation and the limit set by ANJL for the consideration of the precautionary measure. The entity argued that the shutdown of the sites, the undoing of bets and the withdrawal of sponsorships would produce irreversible effects.
According to BNLData's assessment, the request has a clear practical effect: delaying a decision by the rapporteur while the prohibition becomes a fait accompli. Hearing from the Attorney General's Office and calling for a public hearing push the examination of the precautionary measure until after the regulated market closes or after the elections.
Debate after the fact
The Attorney General's Office (AGU) justifies the request for a hearing by citing the "sensitivity" of the issue and the need to "update the instruction" after the November 2024 hearing. This argument exposes the government's contradiction. If the matter requires a pluralistic debate involving researchers, public bodies, and affected economic sectors, this debate should have taken place before the issuance of a provisional measure that extinguished a market authorized by the State itself.
The statement asserts that "civil society was consulted before the decision was made" and lists the participants: CNBB, IECLB, CNI, Febraban, Dieese, CNC, and Idec. The list does not include any operators, industry associations, football clubs, broadcasters, or sports entities. The sector that paid a R$ 30 million grant for authorization and operated under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance's Prize and Betting Secretariat – SPA-MF – was not consulted.
For the new hearing, the Attorney General's Office (AGU) generically mentions "the representative entities of the betting sector." However, when it indicates names "with experience and authority on the matter," it repeats almost the same list from the meeting that preceded the Provisional Measure: CNC, CNI, IDV, Febraban, Idec, Dieese, CNBB, and IECLB. The CNC is the author of ADI 7721. These are, for the most part, entities that have already positioned themselves against the activity based on narratives constructed for this purpose.
The political calendar
The request for expanded debate comes after the first round of elections. According to an assessment by President Lula's own campaign, reported in the press in recent days, the ban on betting negatively impacted the election results. Only after measuring this cost did the government begin to defend, in the Judiciary, the discussion it had dispensed with by opting for the provisional measure. Furthermore,
The statement also includes opinion polls in the case file. Based on a technical note from the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency, the Attorney General's Office cites a Datafolha survey showing that 78% support the ban, broken down by voters of Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro.
Studies that have already been challenged.
To support the argument that regulation has failed, the Attorney General's Office (AGU) again cites studies that BNLData has already fact-checked and challenged in its FactCheck. These include the IEPS estimate of R$ 38,8 billion annually in social damages, CNC surveys on retail defaults and losses, and economist Guilherme Klein's calculations on the impact of betting on GDP.
The statement itself acknowledges limitations in this data. It recognizes that the 140% growth in SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system) services, measured between 2018 and 2025, does not correspond to the number of people served and does not isolate cases linked to fixed-odds betting. It states that the R$ 30,6 billion attributed to healthcare by IEPS (Brazilian Institute of Social Security) are not expenses actually incurred by the SUS. And it notes that betting should not be considered the "exclusive cause" of the financial deterioration of families.
There are other admissions. The Attorney General's Office (AGU) acknowledges that authorized operators "do not constitute the vector of the illegal activity" and that the clandestine market accounts for 41% to 51% of the total. It also acknowledges that the cost of reconstituting an illegal website is "negligible" compared to the state cost of taking it down. These are arguments that weigh against the effectiveness of the prohibition, not in favor of it.
The tax bill
The document presents the official figures for the estimated loss of tax revenue from the Federal Revenue Service: R$ 1,541 billion in 2026, R$ 5,15 billion in 2027, and R$ 5,33 billion in 2028. The inspection fee will cease to generate R$ 268,8 million in revenue over the three-year period.
The estimate, however, falls short of what the sector actually collected. Revenue totaled R$ 8,9 billion in 2025 and R$ 6,2 billion between January and August 2026 alone, an average of R$ 775 million per month. The government's projection for 2027 equates to approximately R$ 430 million per month, slightly more than half the current rate. If the 2026 level is maintained, the annual loss would exceed R$ 9 billion. The National Treasury also reported that any potential compensation liabilities were excluded from the calculation, and the Attorney General's Office (AGU) maintains that there is no obligation to compensate operators or return concessions.
The demonstration ends with a phrase that summarizes the government's change of position on the legal framework it helped to build: "The 'dragon' was untamable."
