No Prediction Market Has Applied to Operate in Australia, Its Financial Regulator Says
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Australia’s corporate regulator said no prediction market operator has applied to run in the country. The same hearing also framed any future application as likely to face treatment similar to binary options, which remain banned in Australia through 2031.
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What it means
Australia already treats binary options as a prohibited product through 2031, so prediction markets are being discussed against a regulatory backdrop that is already restrictive. ASIC’s handling of these applications sits with the country’s main markets and consumer-protection framework, and Sarah Court’s remarks place prediction-market operators inside that existing supervisory approach. For readers, the key point is that the current debate is not about a brand-new category with no precedent; it is being lined up beside a product class Australia has already decided to keep out.
For operators, the immediate practical effect is that there is no live application process underway with ASIC, and any future request would face scrutiny under a framework associated with banned binary options. That matters for firms that build event-based trading products because they would need to plan around a regulator that has not yet received a filing and has already signaled a restrictive lens. Market access in Australia therefore looks uncertain at the entry stage rather than after launch.
The wider issue is the line between financial speculation and betting-style contracts. Prediction markets promise a way to trade on real-world outcomes, while regulators worry about products that look too much like binary options, which Australia has already chosen to restrict. This case shows that jurisdictions can still draw a hard boundary even as event contracts spread in other markets, and that boundary can limit where such products are allowed to exist.
What is still open is whether any prediction market operator will apply to ASIC and, if one does, how the regulator will assess that filing in practice. The Senate hearing established only the current absence of applications and the stated comparison with binary options; it did not settle the exact conditions an applicant would need to meet. A future filing, and ASIC’s response to it, would be the facts that clarify how strict the regime will be.
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