Thousands of dollars are changing hands over who will become Windsor’s next mayor — even though people in Ontario are not permitted to trade on the platform hosting the market. With about six weeks until the Oct. 26 municipal election, prediction market Polymarket has opened trading on several mayoral races across the province. As of Tuesday afternoon, the Windsor election market had recorded about US$5,200 in trading volume. Incumbent Drew Dilkens was trading at an implied probability of roughly 66 per cent, with Fred Francis around 35 per cent. Those numbers can change throughout the day as users buy and sell contracts. But experts caution those percentages are not polling numbers and, in Windsor’s case, may not tell voters very much at all. ‘These are not polls’ Prediction markets allow users to buy contracts tied to whether a future event will happen. Rather than a traditional sportsbook setting the odds, prices move as users trade with one another. Andreas Park, a professor of finance at the University of Toronto, said the idea is that people are effectively “putting their money where their mouth is.” With enough participants and trading, Park said, those prices can sometimes provide insight into what a larger group collectively thinks is likely to happen. Windsor’s market, however, is small. “If you look at it, there’s just a few trades a day,” Park told CTV News. “If there’s insufficient trading activity then you don’t really learn very much from this. So it’s really just a gimmick.” York University political scientist Zac Spicer offered a similar warning. “These are not polls,” he said. “This is people putting money down on who they think is going to win.” Spicer said prediction markets can become another source voters use to “cobble together information” about who appears to be ahead or behind, particularly in municipal elections where traditional polling is often scarce. That makes understanding the limitations especially important. With only a few thousand dollars traded on the Windsor contest, Spicer said relatively small transactions could move the displayed probabilities significantly. “A thousand bucks could quickly move the probability odds,” he said. “But so could ten wagers of a hundred dollars.” Ontarians can look — but can’t trade There is another wrinkle for anyone viewing the Windsor market from Windsor itself. Ontario residents are not permitted to trade on Polymarket. That restriction follows a 2025 settlement between the Ontario Securities Commission and Polymarket’s former and current operators, Blockratize Inc. and Adventure One QSS Inc. The operators paid a $200,000 administrative penalty after the OSC determined they had offered prohibited binary options to Ontario investors. As part of an undertaking, the companies agreed to maintain terms stating Ontario residents cannot trade on Polymarket and implement controls preventing them from depositing or trading through the platform. Polymarket confirmed to CTV News Tuesday that trading remains restricted in Ontario, while saying more than 90 per cent of visitors use the site to view information rather than trade. The company’s own rules also prohibit users from using tools such as VPNs to circumvent geographic restrictions. Regulators still assessing prediction markets The Canadian Securities Administrators provided additional clarification to CTV News. The CSA said neither of Polymarket’s operators involved in the OSC settlement was registered in Ontario or any other Canadian jurisdiction to provide regulated services to Canadian investors. It also pointed to current national rules surrounding event contracts. Two members of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization have been authorized to provide Canadian clients access to certain event contracts traded on regulated U.S. markets. Political contracts, however, are specifically excluded. CIRO says its investment dealer members may not offer or facilitate contracts based on elections, political events, party leadership races or referendums. “To date, no prediction market has been recognized as an exchange or registered as a dealer — or exempted from those requirements — by the CSA,” the regulator told CTV News. The CSA and CIRO issued further guidance Aug. 27 saying sports and entertainment event contracts should generally fall outside securities and derivatives regulation, while the treatment of other categories continues to be assessed. Ontario’s Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Gaming similarly told CTV News it continues to monitor prediction markets and review the applicable legal and regulatory frameworks. Polymarket defends the model Polymarket says its markets are intended to pull together information spread across many sources — including polling, public records, reporting and participants’ own knowledge — and turn it into a constantly changing probability. The company said popularity alone does not determine whether a market is listed and that markets presenting heightened legal, regulatory or integrity concerns receive additional review or are not listed. Polymarket currently hosts markets on a number of Ontario municipal races, including Toronto, Ottawa, London, Barrie, Kitchener and others. For now, Windsor residents can watch the market move as election day approaches. They just cannot put their own money behind it on Polymarket.
