IG Group wants prediction markets up and running in the UK before the end of 2026, starting with financial event contracts for professional clients and adding sports, politics, and entertainment in early 2027. The FTSE 100 trading company laid out the plans at its Capital Markets Event on Oct. 22, and confirmed it has applied for a UK gambling licence to cover the expansion.
IG Consumer, the division behind the company’s retail trading and investment products, will run the initial launch. IG already has a unified UK platform combining traditional trading, investments, and cryptocurrency, and prediction markets will be added to it during the fourth quarter. Only professional clients will get access to the financial event contracts at first, with the sports, political, and entertainment markets opening things up to consumers next year.
The licence application comes from IG View Limited, a London-based subsidiary trading as IG Prediction Markets. The UK Gambling Commission’s public register lists it as a pending application for a remote General Betting Standard licence covering real events. Nothing has been granted yet, and IG hasn’t given an exact date for launching the gambling-related contracts in 2027.
Back in February, the Gambling Commission said platforms letting customers trade contracts on the outcome of real-world events would generally fall under existing British gambling law. Its initial view was that current prediction market products look like betting exchanges and would likely need a betting intermediary licence, depending on how they’re structured. Spread betting stays with the Financial Conduct Authority, which already regulates IG’s financial trading businesses.
Kalshi and Polymarket have taken a very different route in the US, where prediction markets have grown fast and both operators argue their event contracts fall under federal derivatives regulation. That position has landed them in legal fights with state gambling regulators trying to apply ordinary sports betting rules to their products. IG, by contrast, is going straight to Britain’s gambling regulator for its sports and other non-financial markets.
Underdog, the US daily fantasy sports and prediction markets operator IG agreed to buy in July, ties into the UK plans as well. The deal is worth up to $1.3 billion, made up of around $1.1 billion in upfront enterprise value and a possible $200 million additional payment, and IG expects it to complete in late 2026 or early 2027, pending regulatory approvals.
Underdog started offering prediction markets in September 2025 and has grown through federally regulated event contracts, running fantasy sports contests alongside its prediction products and building its own exchange and clearing infrastructure. IG says Underdog has become the third-largest US prediction markets venue by regulated notional volume, using a measure that counts both prediction markets and fantasy sports combination trades. Underdog is expected to keep its brand and management after the acquisition.
IG Consumer CEO Michael Healy told investors the company sees strong demand for prediction markets among British customers. IG’s UK business has grown active customers and net revenue roughly twice as fast as the rest of the Consumer division over the past 21 months, and customers using multiple products bring in about three times the average revenue of single-product users, which gives IG a clear reason to put event contracts next to its existing investment services.
A UK marketing campaign promoting the expanded platform is also on the way, with ads scheduled for channels including Sky Sports in November under the message “trade better.” IG CEO Breon Corcoran said the company plans to invest in its brands and widen its product range as trading, investing, and entertainment increasingly overlap.
Betfair, Smarkets, and Matchbook already run regulated betting exchanges in Britain, but IG would be putting prediction markets inside a platform mainly used for financial trading and investing. The first financial contracts are scheduled for Q4 2026, with sports, entertainment, and political products planned for early 2027, though those still depend on the Gambling Commission approving IG View’s pending application.