Rio and Belo Horizonte Ban Betting Ads in Public Spaces, and a Lawyer Calls It Unconstitutional

Two of Brazil's biggest cities moved against betting advertising on the same day, and the licensed industry is already lining up to fight back. Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro each published decrees on Monday, July 13, barring betting operators from advertising in public spaces, on street furniture and at government events. The matching timing points to a coordinated municipal push, and it arrives days before new federal advertising rules take effect on July 17, in the middle of a World Cup that has made Brazil one of the busiest betting markets on the planet.

Belo Horizonte's Decree No. 19,654, signed by mayor Álvaro Damião, amends the city's Code of Ordinances to prohibit static and digital advertising for betting operators on urban furniture and municipal assets, covering panels, posters, billboards and screens. The ban extends to concessions, permits and authorizations granted by the city and to events the municipal government organizes, so companies running municipal facilities can no longer use those spaces to promote betting brands. It also bars advertising structures within 100 meters of schools, museums and public facilities serving children and young people. City bodies have 15 business days to review current contracts and suspend anything that does not comply, and the rule took effect on publication. Rio's Decree No. 58,274/2026, published the same day, prohibits betting advertising in outdoor and public spaces, making Rio the first Brazilian state capital to do so.

The constitutional challenge

The regulated sector's objection came fast. Fabio Ferreira Couto, a member of the Gaming Law Commission at the Rio de Janeiro bar association (OAB-RJ), called Rio's decree unconstitutional, writing on LinkedIn that it is "a perfect example of how the eagerness for an electoral platform can trample the Federal Constitution and asphyxiate the business environment in Brazil." He tied the timing to the elections scheduled for October and argued the decree interferes in an activity whose regulation is the exclusive competence of the Union under the Federal Constitution, not a matter for municipal government.

Couto's substantive complaint is that the decree treats licensed and illegal operators as one. Equating regulated companies with unlawful platforms amounts to a "dangerous generalization" and a "witch hunt" against the whole sector, he said, and the municipal rule ends up hitting the authorized, compliant companies while illegal platforms sit outside any municipal oversight. He also argued the decrees ignore the federal framework already built by the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) at the Ministry of Finance, which has defined advertising rules including mandatory warnings about financial risk and addiction and a ban on abusive practices. His decree forces advertisers, concessionaires and clubs to pull operator campaigns immediately under threat of fines and even loss of licenses, and Couto called on licensed operators, especially small and mid-sized ones, to litigate jointly through their trade bodies.

Municipal bans, a federal tightening, and a national push

The city decrees are one layer of a broader clampdown. On July 10 the federal government tightened its advertising rules, and from July 17 every ad by a licensed operator must carry a finance-ministry warning and may no longer present betting as easy money or use commentators and influencers to push specific wagers. The SPA has been enforcing in parallel: after monitoring 48 World Cup broadcasts on the streaming platform CazéTV and identifying 74 betting suggestions during coverage, it ordered the suspension of the ads under review. Several bills in the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate go further still, proposing to ban betting advertising nationwide, which the regulated sector opposes on the ground that the activity is legal and licensed.

The stakes are large because the market is. Brazil's licensed betting sector produced R$37 billion (about $7 billion) in gross gaming revenue in its first year across 79 operators and 25.2 million bettors, one of the three biggest regulated online markets in the world, and advertising is the engine that acquisition runs on. For affiliates and operators, a patchwork of city-level bans layered on top of the federal rules turns media planning into a compliance problem that varies by jurisdiction, and outdoor, event and sponsorship inventory in two major metros is now off the table. Couto's warning points at the sharper risk: if courts uphold municipal authority to restrict a federally regulated activity, other cities follow before the October vote, and the licensed operators who followed the federal rulebook lose channels while unlicensed sites, which never advertised through municipal concessions anyway, are untouched. This is the same regulated-versus-illegal tension running through Brazil's federal decree blocking illegal betting funds and the SPA's ban on social features inside licensed apps, and it lands as the market is still maturing under the Finance Ministry's oversight. Whether the decrees survive a legal challenge is now the question the sector wants answered.