Daily fantasy sports and prediction markets operator PrizePicks is shutting down its Canadian operations to focus on U.S. expansion.
“On March 3, PrizePicks announced its planned exit from the Canadian market,” a PrizePicks spokesperson told Canadian Gaming Business on Tuesday. “We are currently hyperfocused on our continued expansion across the U.S. and delivering the best product experience for our players.”
PrizePicks will stop taking deposits for new fantasy lineups starting on March 10 and players will need to withdraw all funds by April 2 before the full Canadian shutdown occurs the following day with the closure of all games across the entire country.
PrizePicks only operated outside Ontario
PrizePicks has never been licensed as an iGaming operator in Ontario and will not pursue a license. After all, as a DFS-focused brand, Ontario does not make much sense as a target market given that the province’s regulations require all players of a game to be located within Ontario.
Like online poker, DFS is a form of real-money gaming that thrives on multi-jurisdictional play. Ontario’s ring-fencing requirement saw other DFS giants FanDuel and DraftKings abandon their paid-entry fantasy contests in the province once it began regulating iGaming, and other DFS operators tend to steer clear of the market.
While Ontario’s gaming regulations forbid cross-border DFS play, the question of whether the provincial government and approved operators could legally offer that option has gone before two separate courts in recent times.
An Ontario Court of Appeal decision found that nothing in the Criminal Code prevented the province from pooling paid-entry peer-to-peer games like PrizePicks’ Arena with players in other jurisdictions, but three non-Ontario Canadian lotteries appealed that decision up to the Supreme Court of Canada.
While PrizePicks has offered its paid DFS contests in other Canadian provinces outside Ontario, its operations north of the border have been “deprioritized,” and the decision has been made to call it quits.
Its desire to focus more firmly on the U.S. market and its apparent decision that Canada isn’t worth the time or effort is similar to the reasoning that social gaming giant VGW gave for pulling the plug on its Canadian operations last year.
PrizePicks’ impending exit also comes as Alberta draws closer to following Ontario by bringing real-money online gambling under regulatory oversight on a licensure basis.
Prediction markets and US expansion priorities for PrizePicks
As Atlanta-headquartered PrizePicks said in its statement, it is “hyper-focused” on U.S. growth. The company is currently live in all 50 states, although the product it offers varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction amid multiple major operational shifts at the company.
Its Player Picks, the paid product that has been on offer in Canada outside Ontario, are now available in as many as 36 states after New York approved the company for a DFS license earlier this year.
However, while PrizePicks used to offer against-the-house betting-style picks, it transitioned to peer-to-peer picks play only in the U.S. last summer. P2P DFS has typically received less pushback from gaming regulators than against-the-house DFS, which has repeatedly been equated to sports betting.
Since that shift, its operations have expanded massively.
PrizePicks launched prediction markets in partnership with U.S. exchange marketplace Kalshi last November and those products are available in almost every state on things like entertainment and culture markets. Its Team Picks, which are sports prediction markets such as game outcomes, spreads and points totals, are currently available in 35 states.
That pivot came amid global lottery giant Allwyn closing an acquisition of a majority share of PrizePicks that valued the company at around US$2.5bn.
PrizePicks cannot lean into prediction markets in Canada as it does in the U.S. because, while legal and regulatory uncertainty shrouds things south of the border, Canadian securities laws treat event contracts as banned binary options that cannot legally be promoted, marketed, or sold to the public.
