Gibraltar has become the first jurisdiction to publish a dedicated regulatory regime for prediction markets, splitting the sector out from conventional gambling law. The Ministry for Justice, Trade and Industry entered the regulations in the Gibraltar Gazette on 13 July, formalising a licensing category that no other government currently operates.
The rules sit within the new Gibraltar Gambling Act 2025 but treat prediction market activity as a distinct statutory category with its own authorisation, operational requirements and supervision. Two operators have already been licensed ahead of the framework going live, and the government says more approvals are close.
Nigel Feetham KC MP, Minister for Justice, Trade and Industry, framed the publication as the delivery of a plan set out earlier in the year.
Today, we have delivered on that commitment with the publication of a bespoke regulatory regime for prediction markets, the first dedicated framework of its kind anywhere in the world.
What the regulation covers
The 24-page document applies what the government calls an activity-based and risk-based approach, regulating operators according to the risks their markets carry. Those risks are grouped under market integrity, participant protection, financial crime prevention, protection of Gibraltar’s reputation, governance, operational resilience and objective settlement.
Contract approval sits at the centre of the regime. Every event contract has to be approved and certified by the Gambling Authority before it can go live, and each must be clear, capable of objective settlement, not readily susceptible to manipulation and consistent with the regulatory objectives. Operators are required to run their own systems to prevent market manipulation, insider dealing and misuse of confidential information.
The Authority keeps discretion to restrict or prohibit contracts it judges inappropriate or contrary to the public interest. The regulations name specific off-limits categories: contracts relating to criminal conduct, death, serious injury or terrorism, and the occurrence of war or armed conflict. That draws a direct line around the political and conflict markets that have drawn scrutiny elsewhere in the sector.
The framework also addresses funding and settlement in digital assets, including stablecoins, a nod to how much of the global prediction market runs on crypto rails. Surveillance, anti-money laundering, sanctions compliance, safeguarding of client assets, conflicts of interest, financial resources and wind-down planning are all written into the regime. An independent supervisory panel has been set up to oversee it, sitting alongside the Gambling Authority in a role Feetham said draws on experience regulating remote, technology-enabled markets.
Two operators already licensed
ADI Predictstreet was the first platform through, though its initial licence was issued under a betting intermediary category because the new Gambling Act had not yet been fully brought into force. The platform is built on the ADI Chain blockchain operated by UAE technology firm ADI Foundation. Under the new legislation, prediction market activity becomes its own licensed statutory category rather than an extension of betting intermediary rules.
US betting marketplace WagerWire is on track to become the second licence holder through its Wire Markets brand, having received approval in principle in June. Co-founder Travis Geiger said the California company plans to launch a B2B and B2C product by the NFL preseason and the start of international football in August, and described Gibraltar’s move as a template others would copy.
What Gibraltar has done is they said, we’re the first to roll out the new rules of the road, and they have a history of being the gold standard. I believe that their framework will be adopted by countries that either have or don’t have their own gaming authority.
A bet against the European grain
Gibraltar is moving in the opposite direction to most of its neighbours. A group of nine European regulators, including authorities in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain, coordinated action against unlicensed prediction platforms in June, citing the absence of mandatory betting limits or cooling-off periods. The EU financial regulator ESMA has separately reaffirmed that binary yes-or-no contracts with fixed payouts fall under its remit. Gibraltar’s decision to press ahead while EU rivals hold back now has a rulebook behind it, and neighbouring Malta has signalled interest in its own regime.
In the US, the birthplace of the modern prediction market, the picture is unresolved. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) treats the platforms as legitimate financial products, while states including Arizona, Connecticut and New York have pushed back, leaving the CFTC in litigation with nine states. Market leaders Kalshi and Polymarket carry valuations of roughly $22 billion and $15 billion respectively. Feetham acknowledged there is no settled international consensus on how the sector should be classified, positioning Gibraltar’s regime as an additional option rather than a definitive answer.
Internationally, there remains no settled consensus as to how prediction markets should be characterised. Different jurisdictions may view them differently. Gibraltar’s framework therefore provides an additional regulatory option by establishing a dedicated regime.
The commercial logic
The timing is not accidental. Roughly 25% of Gibraltar’s GDP comes from gambling, and the UK is the core market for most operators based there. UK gambling tax increases have squeezed that base, and the territory has responded by widening what it can license. The prediction market regime is the second regulatory framework Feetham has introduced in as many weeks, following tokenisation legislation, both aimed at pulling new digital sectors onto the Rock. For a jurisdiction that has spent 25 years building its iGaming base, prediction markets are the next diversification bet.
The government says it has fielded interest from a number of prospective applicants, some of them globally recognised businesses, and expects to issue a further approval in principle in the coming weeks. Whether Gibraltar’s rulebook becomes the model Geiger predicts, or an outlier while larger markets keep blocking the platforms, will depend on how the first licensed operators perform under a regime no regulator has tested before.
Source: HM Government of Gibraltar
