A federal judge handed Stake the first court order any licensed operator had won against Brazil’s nationwide betting ban on Oct. 8, temporarily preserving its licence and letting Stake.bet.br keep running until Oct. 25. It lasted barely a day. The Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region, or TRF-3, suspended the injunction on Oct. 9 following an appeal from Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office.
Judge Cristiane Farias Rodrigues dos Santos of São Paulo’s 9th Federal Civil Court granted the partial injunction after Stake challenged Provisional Measure 1,394/2026, the measure that prohibited fixed-odds betting across Brazil. Stake had wanted the whole measure suspended and its federal licence kept alive until the end of 2029, which the judge refused, protecting its existing authorization only until Oct. 25 instead.
Nothing in that ruling declared the betting ban unconstitutional or stopped the government from enforcing it after Oct. 25. What it did was temporarily bar authorities from treating Stake’s licence as already extinguished, and suspend any blocking or redirecting of Stake.bet.br that relied solely on the earlier termination of its authorization. Sanctions based only on Stake continuing to operate within the limits of the order were also ruled out.
Stake told the court it had invested R$128 million in Brazil after receiving its federal licence under Portaria SPA/MF No. 263/2025, including the R$30 million authorization fee needed to enter the regulated market. The judge said the case raised questions of legal certainty, proportionality, and the protection of investments made under the previous regulatory framework, while still declining to let Stake keep operating through 2029.
TRF-3 president Johonsom Di Salvo suspended the injunction a day after the AGU’s immediate appeal, saying that letting one operator continue legally while the rest of the licensed market stayed shut created a regulatory asymmetry that could undermine the nationwide policy set out in the provisional measure. His decision restored the ban’s full effect on Stake and cleared federal authorities to restrict access to its platform again.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed Provisional Measure 1,394 on Sept. 25, requiring licensed betting sites and apps to go offline from Oct. 6 and operators to arrange the return of remaining customer balances. R$1.325 billion was still sitting in betting accounts belonging to around 26.5 million customers when the shutdown started, according to the Ministry of Justice, with banks due to return outstanding balances between Oct. 9 and 14.
The broader challenge to the ban sits separately before Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, where the National Association of Games and Lotteries and the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming argue that the government abruptly cancelled authorizations operators had paid for and gave them no adequate transition period. Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux is handling those cases.
Even short-lived, Stake’s injunction was the first lower-court decision to partially limit the ban’s effects for a federally licensed operator. With it reversed, Stake can’t rely on the order to keep operating, and whether Brazil can wipe out its regulated betting market through a provisional measure is still a question for the Supreme Court.