Not a Security: Canada Steps Away from Sports Event Contracts
On August 27 the Canadian Securities Administrators and CIRO published a joint notice saying that a contract paying out on the result of a game does not belong under securities and derivatives law. The notice stops there. It names no regulator that should pick the file up, and the gaming industry spent the same afternoon arguing that the answer is already written into provincial law.
Casinos That Also Run a Sportsbook
None of this changes what a Canadian can bet on this week. Sports contracts stay off the investing apps, and a sportsbook is still the place where tonight’s game gets a price. Three operators from our main rankings run one next to the casino on a single wallet. All three are offshore, none are licensed by iGaming Ontario, and each review says so on the page.
What the Notice Says
Staff Notice 91-307 came out over two names. The CSA is the securities regulators of every province and territory acting together, and CIRO is the self-regulatory organization that oversees investment dealers. The CSA half is a staff view, and the line everyone quoted came from chair Stan Magidson: event contracts based on sports- or entertainment-related activities or outcomes “should not be regulated within securities and derivatives legislation.”
CIRO’s half is the one with teeth. It says CIRO does not consider it appropriate to facilitate or approve applications from its dealer members to trade contracts of that kind. A Canadian brokerage that wants to list a market on the Oilers winning the Cup can still ask. It now knows the answer.
Two dealer members already hold permission for a narrow set of event contracts, under terms CIRO set in consultation with the CSA, and the notice says those terms may be tightened later. Other categories of event contract are still being assessed, which is the polite way of saying the file is open.
The Question It Skips
Ruling that a product is not a security says nothing about who watches it instead. Betting in Canada is provincial business. Ontario runs its market through the AGCO and iGaming Ontario, Alberta opened its own in July 2026, and everywhere else the only licensed online option is the provincial lottery platform. The notice hands the file to none of them by name. It steps back and leaves the space to whatever already covers a bet.
For anyone trying to sell sports contracts here, that is worse than a rejection. “Not securities” closes one door without opening another. Kalshi has no CIRO authorization for securities activity in Canada and no gaming licence from a provincial regulator, so the contracts that made it famous in the United States have no Canadian door marked for them at all.
What Wealthsimple and Interactive Brokers Can Still List
The two authorized dealer members are Wealthsimple and Interactive Brokers Canada. Wealthsimple got its authorization from CIRO in March 2026 and launched Wealthsimple Predict over the summer with roughly 4,000 of Kalshi’s binary contracts. Sports were left out of that launch, and after August they are unlikely to be added.
The permitted categories are weather and the environment, financial markets, and economic indicators. A contract generally has to take at least 30 days to resolve, and sports and elections are excluded outright. That settlement rule does most of the work on its own: a hockey game resolves in three hours, and resolving while you watch is the entire product.
Why the Gaming Industry Applauded
The Canadian Gaming Association welcomed the notice the same day. Paul Burns, its president and CEO, said sports wagering is sports betting whatever the platform, and that it belongs within the framework the provinces built specifically to regulate it. Read that with the membership in mind. The CGA speaks for licensed operators, and every one of them paid for a licence that a prediction market would have skipped.
The consumer argument underneath it holds up anyway. A provincially licensed operator has to verify age, which is 19 in Ontario, offer deposit limits and self-exclusion, and answer a complaint through a process that ends at the regulator rather than at its own support desk. Ron Segev, a gaming lawyer, made the same point about a gambling product sold as an investment: the responsible gambling machinery does not come with it. A brokerage account was never built to carry any of that.
What It Means If You Are the One Betting
Nothing about your account changed this week. Single-event betting has been legal in Canada since Bill C-218 passed in August 2021, the provinces license the books, and the split between a regulated market and an offshore one sits where it sat in July.
What the notice takes off the table is the route people were waiting on: buying a position on tonight’s game inside an investing app, with no gambling licence anywhere in the chain. In the United States that route is the fastest growing part of the business. Here it now needs either a change of view at the CSA or a provincial regulator willing to license the thing as gambling, which is what the industry has been asking for all along.
The books we test are the other kind. CrazyTower, TikiTaka and Cazeus run a sportsbook and a casino off one wallet, offshore, with no provincial licence behind them. What can be measured there is the part that decides whether money arrives: withdrawal ceilings, how long a payout takes in practice, and what the bonus terms do to a balance before it can move. Our high-roller thresholds apply on the sports side the same way they do in the casino, the TI 2026 recap covers the same one-wallet setup from the esports end, and the ToonieBet deal with the Ottawa REDBLACKS shows what a licensed operator does with its marketing budget instead.
The Comic
The comic came out of reading the notice twice. Both halves of it are a definition of what the product is not. Ask what it is instead, and the nameplate turns around.
Straight Answers on the CSA and CIRO Notice
Staff Notice 91-307, published on August 27, 2026, sets out the CSA staff view that event contracts based on sports- or entertainment-related activities or outcomes should not be regulated within securities and derivatives legislation. CIRO said it does not consider it appropriate to facilitate or approve applications from its dealer members to trade them.
No. Not being a security is not a permission. Betting is licensed province by province, and no provincial gaming regulator has licensed a sports prediction market. Kalshi holds no such licence, and CIRO has not authorized it for securities activity in Canada either.
Yes, in the categories that were already allowed: weather and environment, financial markets and economic indicators. Contracts generally have to take at least 30 days to settle, and sports and election markets are excluded. Wealthsimple and Interactive Brokers Canada are the two CIRO dealer members with that authorization.
The notice does not name anyone. It says securities and derivatives law is the wrong home and leaves it there. Sports betting itself is provincial: the AGCO and iGaming Ontario in Ontario, AGLC and the Alberta iGaming Corporation in Alberta, and the provincial lottery platform everywhere else.
It welcomed the guidance. Paul Burns, the CGA’s president and CEO, said sports wagering is sports betting whatever the platform, and that it belongs within the framework the provinces built to regulate it. The CGA represents licensed gambling operators, so the position was the expected one.
No. Single-event betting has been legal since Bill C-218 passed in August 2021, the provinces license the books, and offshore sites still take Canadian accounts. The notice closes off the brokerage route, not the sportsbook.
