IG Group applies for UK gambling licence to enter prediction markets

IG Group left the gambling business in 2011, when it sold the customer base of its Extrabet betting arm to Spreadex. Fifteen years later, the company has applied to the UK Gambling Commission for a remote general betting licence under a subsidiary called IG View Limited, trading as "ig prediction markets." The licence has not been granted. It sits pending on the Commission's public register.

The structure of the application tells you something about the architecture IG is working inside. Contracts on financial events will launch for UK professional clients under FCA oversight, likely before the end of this year. Contracts on politics, sports, and entertainment require the Gambling Commission licence — those open in early 2027, assuming the application clears. The FCA banned binary options for retail investors in 2019, which is why the financial-event products are gated to professionals. The non-financial contracts, by contrast, live entirely on the gambling side of the ledger.

That division matters for what IG is building. It is not choosing between financial services and gambling. It is operating both in parallel, under separate regulatory regimes, with different product sets assigned to each. Chief Executive Breon Corcoran, who ran Betfair and Paddy Power Betfair before joining IG, called this the convergence of trading, investing, and entertainment. That is one way to describe it. Another is that IG is building a product that crosses a regulatory boundary deliberately drawn to keep these categories separate, and doing so by holding a licence on each side.

Corcoran knows the Gambling Commission's regime from the inside. Spreadex and Sporting Index hold the same type of licence IG has applied for. Betfair holds a betting intermediary licence — the category the Commission said in February would appear to cover prediction markets. The register shows no entry for Kalshi or Polymarket. IG is attempting to be the first major institution to enter the UK prediction market through the licensed door rather than around it.

In July, IG agreed to acquire Underdog, a US fantasy sports and prediction markets operator, for up to approximately $1.3 billion. That deal is expected to close around the same time the UK gambling licence would be operative.

The relevant legal question is whether a company holding an FCA-regulated entity and a Gambling Commission-regulated entity, offering prediction contracts across both, is running one business or two. The Commission's pending decision on the licence application will answer the narrower question. The broader one — how UK law classifies a market that prices political outcomes through a wagering framework — has not been formally resolved.

The standard the Commission applies to a remote general betting licence application includes fit-and-proper assessment, technical compliance, and whether the proposed activity falls within the licensed category. IG has structured its application to fit. Whether the activity as designed stays within those bounds once the products are live is a separate determination.