If you have an account on a prediction market — the kind where you buy a contract on an election or a sports result rather than "placing a bet" — Irish law now has a view on that. The view is that it is betting, and that the platform needs a licence.
Under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 the regulator issues separate consumer licences depending on how the betting reaches you:
| Licence | What it covers |
|---|---|
| In-Person Betting | betting from premises in Ireland that a person walks into; pool betting included |
| Remote Betting | betting provided by remote means; pool betting included |
| Remote Betting Intermediary | providing a facility that lets one person bet with another person, not with the platform itself |
The third one is the interesting category, and it is the one exchanges have always sat in: the operator is not your counterparty, it runs the marketplace where you and a stranger take opposite sides.
One practical wrinkle from the same page: a combined in-person and remote licence is not available yet. During the transition an operator that does both has to apply for each separately. Expect to see familiar high-street names appear twice in the register.
The Act defines a remote betting intermediary, in section 2(1), as a business providing a facility that lets someone bet by remote means with a person other than the intermediary itself. Read that definition next to how a prediction market works and the two describe the same thing.
The regulator has now said so explicitly. Its position is that prediction markets which provide betting activities fall inside that definition, and that operators wanting to offer their services to people in Ireland must hold the appropriate licence before making those services available.
For platforms that do not have one, the instruction on the same page is blunt: take appropriate steps to stop consumers in Ireland reaching them, or face enforcement. Providing a betting activity here without a GRAI licence is described as a serious offence.
Nothing about this makes the user the offender — the licensing duty sits with the operator. But two consequences land on your side of the screen.
The check is the same as for any operator: look it up on the public register before you fund an account, not after.
grai.ie/licensing-regulation.