Canada's CIRO bans sports event contracts and stops dealers displaying unpermitted contracts

The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) has tightened the rules for investment dealers that offer or facilitate trading in event contracts. Its new terms and conditions expressly prohibit contracts based on sports or entertainment events or outcomes.

Bulletin 26-0215, published on 16 October, updates the terms that CIRO first set out in March. The updated terms:

• refine the categories of permitted event contracts
• prohibit the presentation or promotion of contracts that are not permitted
• formally list sports and entertainment contracts as prohibited
• define “event contract” and set requirements for the indicators used to determine outcomes

From guidance to prohibition

CIRO’s March 2026 bulletin limited the categories of event contracts available to Canadian clients and restricted product maturity and client leverage.

On 27 August, CIRO and Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) staff issued joint guidance, Staff Notice 91-307. In it:

• CSA staff said sports and entertainment contracts should not be regulated under securities and derivatives legislation.
• CIRO staff said they would not facilitate or approve dealer applications to trade them.

The new bulletin turns that position into an explicit prohibition in the terms and conditions.

Display ban

The most significant operational change for dealers is a new display ban. Dealers must not “advertise, display, disseminate, feature, highlight, market, promote, rank, recommend, place on a watchlist, issue alerts about, or otherwise present” any event contract they are not permitted to offer.

The ban covers every client-facing platform, including scanners and alerts. It also applies indirectly, through links to third-party sites.

CIRO closes off the most obvious workaround. Dealers “cannot comply with this requirement by disabling trading functionality while nonetheless making non-permitted event contracts visible to clients.”

Objective indicators

Permitted categories must be based on objectively measurable indicators. CIRO gives examples:

Permitted	Not permitted
A contract on the published unemployment rate	A contract on whether a particular employer will lay off staff
A contract on the published value of a securities index	A contract on whether a company will announce an IPO or acquisition
A contract on measured rainfall	A contract on whether a government will announce an environmental policy

“Event contract” now covers any product commonly described as an event, prediction, prediction market or forecast contract, whatever name a marketplace or intermediary gives it.

Authorisation first

The terms do not by themselves authorise anything. Before launching an event-contract business line, a dealer must notify CIRO under rule subsection 2246(2), file a material change application, and receive authorisation.

CIRO and the CSA said they may issue further guidance or restrictions.

Why it matters

For cross-border retail brokers, the display ban is the main burden. A shared North American app that shows a US sports book of event contracts with the trade button greyed out for Canadian users would breach the rules. So would watchlists and alerts that pick those contracts up automatically.

Compliance teams will need jurisdiction-specific product filtering across the client front end, not only at order entry. The indicator test also narrows what counts as a “financial” contract. Markets on corporate events such as M&A or IPO announcements fall outside the permitted categories, even though they are close to financial markets.

Sources

• CIRO, Bulletin 26-0215, “Update to CIRO Requirements Regarding Event Contracts”, 16 October 2026 — https://www.ciro.ca/newsroom/publications/update-ciro-requirements-regarding-event-contracts