TLDR
- British Columbia’s Independent Gambling Control Office (IGCO) ruled that sports and entertainment prediction markets count as gambling.
- The decision requires these markets to follow the Criminal Code of Canada and provincial gaming laws.
- IGCO’s move follows guidance from the Canadian Securities Administrators and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization a day earlier.
- Only BCLC’s PlayNow.com is authorized to offer regulated online gambling in British Columbia.
- Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis backed the same stance and is reviewing its own oversight rules.
British Columbia’s gambling regulator has made a decision about prediction markets. The Independent Gambling Control Office announced last Friday that event contracts tied to sports or entertainment outcomes are gambling products.
This means they are not financial products. The IGCO said these contracts must follow the Criminal Code of Canada and provincial gaming laws.
What Led to the Decision
The announcement came one day after the Canadian Securities Administrators and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization released their own guidance. Those two groups said sports and entertainment contracts should not fall under securities or derivatives rules.
The IGCO said it agrees with that view. The regulator wanted to make its own position clear to residents of the province.
British Columbia has one authorized gambling operator. That is the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, known as BCLC.
BCLC runs PlayNow.com. This is the only online gambling site allowed to operate legally in the province.
PlayNow.com meets a set of standards. These include integrity checks, age verification, responsible gambling tools, and advertising rules.
Warning to Residents
The IGCO issued a warning as part of its announcement. It said any other online platform offering sports or entertainment event contracts to British Columbia residents is illegal.
The regulator told people in the province to avoid these platforms. It repeated that only PlayNow.com is sanctioned for this kind of activity.
The IGCO explained its reasoning in a direct statement. It said products based on sports or entertainment outcomes are gambling and must be treated that way under existing law.
This puts the responsibility on prediction market operators. They now need to follow gambling regulations rather than financial ones if they want to serve customers in British Columbia.
The IGCO is not the only regulator to react. It is the second one to respond after the CSA and CIRO guidance came out.
Hours after that first guidance was released, the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis regulator spoke up too. It supported the same position taken by the CSA and CIRO.
Alberta’s regulator said it is now reviewing what this guidance means for its own province. It has not yet announced specific changes to its oversight of online gambling.
Both British Columbia and Alberta are provinces where gambling rules fall under regional control. Each province sets its own standards for what counts as legal gambling activity.
The Criminal Code of Canada sets the national baseline. Provinces then add their own gaming legislation on top of that.
This layered system means prediction market operators face different rules depending on where their users are located. A platform that operates freely in one province could be breaking the law in another.
For now, British Columbia residents have one clear message from regulators. Any prediction market tied to sports or entertainment outcomes must be treated as gambling, and only PlayNow.com carries the province’s official approval to offer it online.
