Regulatory answers usually arrive as a prohibition. The British one arrived as an address. On 4 February 2026 Brad Enright, Director of Strategy at the Gambling Commission, wrote that current prediction market products would appear to fall within the definition of a betting intermediary, and added that while prediction markets are new in the United States, betting exchanges have existed in the UK since 2000. Nothing had to be invented. The category was already there, with licence holders already standing in it.
That is a useful answer, and we said so when we wrote about how Britain splits a prediction market by what the contract points at. What we did not do then, and what nobody else seems to have done since, is check the other half of it. A route that exists on paper is worth exactly as much as the number of firms that have walked down it. So on 11 September 2026 we opened the Gambling Commission register of gambling businesses, filtered it to remote betting, and read every licence summary in the list. There were 258 businesses. Nine of them hold an active remote betting intermediary licence.
The category Britain pointed at was defined in 2005 and filled in 2000
The legal definition is one sentence. Section 13 of the Gambling Act 2005 says a betting intermediary is a person who provides a service designed to facilitate the making or acceptance of bets between others, and that acting as one counts as providing facilities for betting. There is no reference to order books, event contracts or probabilities, which is why the definition reaches a yes or no market without being amended. The Commission's own description of the remote betting intermediary operating licence is blunter still. It says the licence lets you bring two or more betting parties together online where you do not carry liability for their bets, and it adds the plain English gloss in brackets: commonly known as a betting exchange.
The government said the same thing a fortnight after the Commission did. Answering written question HL14169 on 16 February 2026, Baroness Twycross confirmed for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that a prediction market operating in Great Britain would need a Commission licence and would be classified as a betting intermediary. Two institutions, one answer, no new law. The interesting question stopped being what the rule is and became who is living under it.
Nine holders, named, with the dates they arrived
These are the nine businesses that held an active remote betting intermediary licence when we read the register on 11 September 2026, in the order the licences begin. Three of them date from 1 November 2014, which is also the single most common licence start date in that part of the register, shared by 27 of the 258 businesses: Smarkets (Malta) Limited, TSE Malta LP, which carries the betfair trading name, and Triplebet Limited, which carries matchbook and easybet. Then Betconnect Limited from 29 February 2016, LC International Limited from 1 July 2019, which carries bwin and coral among others, Exchange Platform Solutions Limited from 29 September 2021, trading as betdaq, Fairplay Exchange Limited from 13 April 2022, Dragoni Technology LTD from 13 September 2022, and Lucra Inc from 17 October 2025, a New York company and the most recent arrival on the list.
Two absences are worth as much as the nine names. Searching the same register for Kalshi and for Polymarket returns no licensed business at all. The two venues that dominate the category in the United States hold no British licence of any kind, which is the practical meaning of the warning at the end of the Commission's February post: operators without a British licence should make sure they are not targeting or transacting with consumers in Great Britain, and criminal offences attach to operating without one.
Eight more of these licences have been handed back since 2024
The register also records licences that have ended, and this is where the shape of the route becomes visible. Among the same 258 remote betting businesses, eight hold a remote betting intermediary licence that is no longer active. Bet Limited surrendered one on 14 May 2025, Playbook Gaming Limited on 19 November 2025, Buddybet UK Limited on 7 November 2024, PocketBet Limited on 28 November 2024, Bet Theory UK Ltd on 3 October 2025 and Wayja Limited on 30 June 2025. iBet Global Limited's licence lapsed on 16 July 2026. Flutter Media Limited's was revoked for non payment of fee on 25 November 2024.
Eight is a floor rather than a total. A company that gave up every British licence disappears from the filter we used, so it cannot be counted from this list at all. Even as a floor it says something the February blog post could not. All eight ended between November 2024 and July 2026, the same twenty months in which prediction markets became the most discussed product in the category, and eight is very nearly the nine that are still standing. The route is open. It is also, on the evidence of the register, a demanding place to stay.
Two of the nine already run something that calls itself a prediction market
The register lists the internet domains recorded against each licence, and two of them answer the original question directly. Under the licence of TSE Malta LP sits an active domain at predicts.betfair.com. Under the licence of Triplebet Limited sits an active domain at predictstreet.matchbook.com, whose own page describes it as Predict Street at Matchbook and as the official prediction market partner of the FIFA World Cup 2026. The betfair address refused our connection from outside Great Britain, so for that one the register entry is all we can show, and we are not describing a product we could not open.
The answer to who stands under the British licence and offers yes or no contracts is therefore not hypothetical, and it is not a start up. It is two established exchange operators that were licensed years before the question was asked, extending a permission they already held to a new product surface. That is the cheapest route into the category anyone has found in Britain, and it is open only to firms that were there first.
The World Cup partner reached British users on a licence it does not hold
On 2 April 2026 FIFA announced ADI Predictstreet as the first official partner in the prediction market category for the 2026 World Cup. Yogonet reported on 6 July 2026 that the company's partnerships include Matchbook for the United Kingdom, Ireland and Brazil, alongside others elsewhere. Search the British register for predictstreet and you get exactly one business back, and it is Triplebet Limited. The brand the user sees is a domain sitting on a licence held by a different company.
Nothing about that is improper, and we are not suggesting it is. Distribution through a licensed operator is how most regulated consumer finance and most regulated betting already works. But it changes what a user can find out unaided. The firm answerable to the Commission for fairness, for complaints and for the conduct of the market is Triplebet Limited, while the name on the product, the shirt and the tournament is somebody else's. Directive 02 asks for conflicts, custody and settlement arrangements to be stated in plain language on the surface where the trade happens. The identity of the licence holder belongs on that list. A user who cannot name the regulated entity cannot use the register, cannot use the complaints route and cannot check whether the protections they assume apply are the ones that actually do.
The same brand met a different answer in Germany
The British route is not a passport, which is the point we made at length in our piece on why there is no such thing as a European passport for a prediction market. The same brand demonstrates it. Sportschau reported on 17 June 2026 that Germany's joint gambling authority GGL had opened a review of ADI Predictstreet as a World Cup sponsor, on the basis that it holds a Gibraltar licence and no German one while appearing in stadium branding and tournament coverage, where only providers on the German whitelist may advertise. A spokesperson said the company does not consider itself in breach and does not target Germany.
One brand, three regulators, three different statuses in the same summer. This is Directive 05 in its most literal form. Standards set against the jurisdiction that regulates next, rather than the one that has not yet, are the only standards that survive a product travelling faster than its permissions do.
The route costs money before the first trade settles
Britain does not charge for approving the product, it charges for the permission to offer it, and both the entry price and the annual price scale with size. The Commission's published fee schedule for the remote betting intermediary licence sets an application fee of 9,138 pounds for the three lowest yield bands, rising through 18,746 pounds, 21,290 pounds, 23,435 pounds and 28,154 pounds to 41,243 pounds for an applicant expecting 550 million pounds of gross gambling yield or more. The annual fee runs from 5,282 pounds below 550,000 pounds of yield to 1,077,027 pounds at a billion or more, with a further 200,000 pounds for each complete additional 500 million. The first annual fee is due 30 days after the licence is issued and is discounted by 25 percent.
On 30 June 2026 the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published its response to the consultation on Gambling Commission fees, confirming a headline 25 percent increase from 1 October 2026, with society lotteries frozen. What the Commission's own updated table shows is more specific than a single percentage, and it matters to anyone sizing a British launch: the bands are being redrawn as well as repriced. From 1 October the lowest band ends at 250,000 pounds of yield rather than 550,000, and its application fee falls to 6,479 pounds while its annual fee edges up to 5,562 pounds. A firm one band higher pays 13,914 pounds to apply instead of 9,138, and an applicant at 3 million pounds of yield pays 37,425 pounds where the same applicant pays 9,138 pounds before that date.
Read as a policy signal rather than a price list, that is a schedule which gets slightly friendlier to a very small venue and considerably more expensive for one arriving at scale. It is also payable whether or not the licence is granted.
The licence puts a venue inside the national self exclusion scheme
The fee is the visible cost. The obligations are the real one, and one of them deserves singling out. Social responsibility code provision 3.5.5 of the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice requires licensees to participate in the national multi operator self exclusion scheme. It applies to all remote licences except a listed set, and the only intermediary carve out in that list is the remote betting intermediary trading room only licence. A venue holding the ordinary remote intermediary licence, which is what all nine holders have, is inside the scheme. A user who self excludes once is excluded across every participating operator, and breach of a social responsibility provision can lead the Commission to review the licence with suspension, revocation or a financial penalty in view.
Read that against Directive 03, which asks for deposit limits, cool off periods and self exclusion to be product features built into the account rather than concessions granted by support staff on request. In Britain the strongest version of that is not a voluntary commitment at all. It is a condition of the licence, enforced by the threat of losing it. A venue that argues self exclusion is unworkable for event contracts is arguing against something nine companies are already doing.
The financial half of the perimeter is being looked at again
All of the above concerns contracts on sport and politics, which sit with the Gambling Commission. Contracts on financial and certain climatic events sit with the Financial Conduct Authority, whose perimeter report published on 26 March 2026 treats financial prediction products as binary options and therefore inside the permanent retail ban set out in COBS 22.6. That is why the British picture inverts the American one, where financial and economic contracts have generally been the safe half of the book.
That half may not stay still. On 7 September 2026 Francisco Rodrigues reported for CoinDesk, citing The Times, that the FCA has held talks with trading platforms about easing the retail ban, while noting that the regulator's public position still supports the restriction on the grounds of the speculative nature of the contracts and the risk of consumer harm. No rule change had been announced as of 11 September 2026, and a report of talks is not a policy. We flag it because a firm planning around the British perimeter should know which half of it is under discussion, and because the answer will decide whether the nine licences described here remain the only door.
What the register is actually telling the category
Three things, and none of them require agreeing with the Commission about anything.
- The licensed path is real and narrow. Nine active licences, three of them dating from 2014, the most recent issued on 17 October 2025, and at least eight surrendered, lapsed or revoked since November 2024. Anyone describing Britain as closed is wrong, and anyone describing it as easy has not looked.
- The brand and the licence holder are not the same entity. Where a prediction market reaches British users through an incumbent's permission, the user sees one name and the regulator holds another. Saying which is which, on the surface where the trade happens, costs nothing and is the whole of Directive 02.
- Most of what we ask for voluntarily is already compulsory there. Participation in national self exclusion, a fee that scales with yield, conduct standards enforceable by licence review. A venue that can meet the British conditions can meet our directives, because the British conditions are stricter.
We wrote on 10 September that a European venue cannot escape authorisation by serving professional clients only, because the ban and the licence are two different obligations. Britain is the mirror image of that problem. Here the licence is available, the category is named, the fees are published and the conditions are known. The open question is not whether a responsible prediction market can be licensed in Great Britain. Nine companies have settled that. It is whether the firms building this category want a permission that comes with a self exclusion scheme attached, and whether they would rather answer that question now or have it answered for them in a jurisdiction that has not decided yet.