Rice, oil, pasta and coffee up, betting apps off: Brazilian supermarkets link October's food sales to the ban on bets. The link is still to be proven.
Six weeks apart, the same government reached for two different tools against the same kind of harm. On 25 September 2026 a provisional measure, MP 1.394, banned fixed-odds betting: the online sports bets and casino games that Brazilians simply call "bets". On 4 November another one, MP 1.399, set the first rates of the Imposto Seletivo, the "sin tax" of Brazil's tax reform. From 2 February 2027 it will hit cigarettes, alcohol, sugary drinks, cars, boats and aircraft.
One tool raises the price of a vice and keeps it inside the legal economy, where it can be measured and taxed. The other switches the vice off, and then tries to measure what happens next. Within a month, Brazil's supermarkets were already claiming that the money had moved from betting apps to rice and coffee.
The full article explains what the sin tax is and what it adds to a European product, why the bets it was also meant to cover have left the tax base, what the supermarket figures prove and what they do not, and how split payment will move tax collection inside the payment itself.