Hacksaw Group Launches B2B Prediction Markets Platform

Hacksaw Group announced on Thursday, October 15, 2026 that it has launched a business-to-business prediction markets platform, giving gaming operators a way to offer peer-to-peer prediction market products without building the technology themselves. The Nasdaq Stockholm-listed company said the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has also approved widening its existing B2B Critical Gaming Supply Licence so that it also reaches Type 3 Gaming Services.

The announcement, published on Hacksaw’s investor relations site at 07:00, positions a supplier whose games include slots, scratch cards and crash games as an infrastructure provider for a product category that regulators in Europe and the United States are still working out how to classify. Hacksaw’s release does not name any operator customers, launch markets or go-live dates.

This article covers what Hacksaw announced, how the platform is meant to work, what the MGA licence categories mean, how European regulators have approached prediction markets so far, what the announcement does and does not establish, and what to watch next.

What Hacksaw Announced

In its release, Hacksaw described the product as a B2B Prediction Markets platform that lets operators put prediction market products in front of their players using the company’s technology, its distribution reach and its operator relationships. Hacksaw called it a strategic expansion and said the platform was built on existing technology and an existing development team, within the company’s current cost base.

The second element of the announcement is regulatory. Hacksaw said the MGA approved extending its existing B2B Critical Gaming Supply Licence to Type 3 Gaming Services, alongside the Type 1 Gaming Services authorization it already held. According to the company, the extension covers business-facing, peer-to-peer prediction market services within the MGA’s regulatory framework.

Two executives were quoted. Group CEO Ana Vrabic Verdir said, “Prediction markets represent a compelling new opportunity at the intersection of technology, entertainment and market participation.” Operational CEO Marcus Cordes described the product as “a solution that enables operators to access prediction market capabilities efficiently and at scale.”

The release carries the standard forward-looking statements notice used by listed companies, which states that outcomes may differ from expectations. The notice covers the company’s statements about future value and opportunity, including its comments on the platform’s potential, and readers should treat those as intentions rather than results.

Hacksaw also said the platform was designed in line with the compliance-first approach behind its existing licensed gaming infrastructure. The release did not say which jurisdictions the product will be offered in, how many operators have signed, or whether any consumer-facing product built on the platform is live.

How the Platform Is Meant to Work

The central design choice is that Hacksaw does not plan to run a consumer prediction market of its own. The company contrasted its approach with consumer-focused platforms that acquire and engage users directly, saying it will supply the underlying technology, infrastructure and volume frameworks instead. Operators stay in charge of their own branding, player relationships and product experience, according to the release.

That places Hacksaw in a familiar role. The company already supplies games to operators across several jurisdictions, and the prediction markets product reuses the same commercial relationships and integrations. Hacksaw argues that this lets an operator add the category faster than it could by building and maintaining the technology internally.

The product is described as peer-to-peer. In a peer-to-peer market, participants trade against one another rather than against the operator, so the quality of the product depends on how many people are taking part. Hacksaw says it addressed that with a connected volume framework that is meant to combine peer-to-peer activity from all of the operators on its network. The idea is that an operator launching a market would draw on broader capacity from the start instead of waiting for its own audience to build.

The release does not explain how that pooling would work in practice. It does not say how contracts are created or settled, who sets the markets, which event categories are covered, or how operators in different regulated markets would be kept apart where local rules require it. Those details matter because the release leaves open how pooled participation would work in markets that have different rules.

The company framed the product as technology rather than as a betting service, but the MGA classification it cites sits within the authority’s gambling licence categories, as the next section shows.

What the MGA Licence Types Cover

The MGA’s website sets out four types of B2B licensing for game providers and back-office suppliers. Hacksaw’s announcement concerns two of them, and the descriptions published by the authority help explain what the extension does and does not signify.

According to the MGA, Type 1 covers house-banked casino and poker games, plus lotteries and virtual sports. That fits Hacksaw’s core catalogue of digital slots and scratch cards, which it already supplies under its Type 1 authorization.

The MGA lists Type 3 as covering pool betting, which includes betting exchanges, as well as player-versus-player poker, bingo and similar games, lottery messenger services and commission-based games. Hacksaw says the extension allows it to offer B2B peer-to-peer prediction market services within that framework. The MGA page does not use the term prediction markets in the category description reviewed for this article, so the link between the two comes from Hacksaw’s own statement of what the approval authorizes.

The table summarizes the four types as the MGA describes them and marks the two that Hacksaw’s release refers to.

The practical reading is narrow. A B2B licence of this kind covers a supplier that provides gaming services to licensed operators; it does not by itself license any operator to offer a product to players in a given country. Each operator remains responsible for the permissions it holds in the markets it serves.

How Europe Has Treated Prediction Markets

Hacksaw’s launch arrives in a regulatory environment that is unsettled. iGaming Business reported on March 26, 2026 that Malta’s Economy Minister Silvio Schembri said the government was “actively exploring the emerging field of prediction markets” and that any change to legislation would need to rest on a clear, forward-looking framework. The outlet added that Malta could end up as the first European jurisdiction with rules written specifically for prediction markets.

The same report described the wider European position. It said that across much of the continent the products are classed as either unlawful gambling or unregulated financial instruments, because no dedicated frameworks exist. It named Germany, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands among the jurisdictions that have moved to block access to Polymarket, on the argument that the platform offers gambling without a licence.

Gibraltar took a different step days later. iGaming Business reported on April 1, 2026 that Minister Nigel Feetham told parliament the territory had licensed its first prediction markets operator, and that Predict Street Ltd received a betting intermediary licence on March 26 under the 2005 Gambling Act, according to Gibraltar’s licence register. The outlet described Gibraltar as the first European market to license a prediction markets operator directly.

The timeline below places those developments next to Hacksaw’s announcement.

Against that backdrop, Hacksaw’s route is a supplier-side one: it relies on a B2B licence category and leaves the question of operator permissions to its customers.

Why It Matters for Operators and Suppliers

For the supplier side of the industry, the announcement is a signal that prediction markets are being treated as a product line rather than only as a separate type of company. A slot and scratch card developer is now selling infrastructure for the category, and the company says it built the platform to accommodate increased market demand.

For operators, the pitch is about speed and liquidity. Hacksaw’s argument is that a new peer-to-peer product is hard to launch because it needs participants on both sides of each market, and that a pooled framework across its network reduces that start-up problem. Whether operators agree is untested, since the release names no customers.

The announcement also matters for investors in the supplier, though this article does not assess the business case. The company said it built the platform inside its existing cost base, and it described the launch as part of a strategy to extend its technology into adjacent categories. Hacksaw gave no revenue expectations for the product in the release, so the financial effect is not quantified in the source material.

For regulators, a supplier-level launch raises a classification question. The MGA’s Type 3 definition covers pool betting and peer-to-peer games, and Hacksaw says the same type now covers peer-to-peer prediction market services. How other regulators classify the same product may differ, as the European picture above shows.

Finally, for players, nothing changes immediately. The platform is not a consumer product, and no operator has announced a launch built on it. Any product that eventually reaches players would arrive through a licensed operator and would be subject to that operator’s local permissions.

What the Announcement Does and Doesn’t Establish

The announcement establishes two things from the company’s own statements: that Hacksaw has launched a B2B prediction markets platform, and that the MGA approved extending its B2B licence to Type 3 Gaming Services. Both rest on a single company release, and the MGA’s own public register or a regulator statement was not part of the sources reviewed for this article.

It does not establish that any operator is offering prediction markets built on the platform. No launch partner is named in the release, and no market or date is given. A platform launch by a supplier is a product availability announcement, not a consumer launch.

It does not establish that prediction markets are regulated gambling in Malta or anywhere else. In March 2026, Malta’s economy minister described the government as exploring the area and discussed a possible framework. The sources reviewed do not report whether a framework has since been enacted, so this article does not state one way or the other.

It also does not mean the licence extension allows operators to serve players in any country. A supplier’s licence authorizes the supplier’s activity; each operator still needs permission in the territory where its customers are located, and many European jurisdictions have taken the position described above.

Finally, the $1 trillion figure is an estimate attributed to Bernstein, quoted by Hacksaw in its release. It describes possible annual trading volume by 2030 across new use cases and geographies. It is a forecast cited by the company, not an observed number, and the release does not give the underlying assumptions.

Market Context: A Category Still Finding Its Rules

Prediction markets function like exchanges for real-world events, with participants trading contracts linked to particular outcomes. iGaming Business reported in March that December 2025 set a record for monthly trading, with volumes above $18 billion, driven largely by platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. That figure refers to the whole sector, not to peer-to-peer products offered through licensed gaming suppliers.

The same outlet noted that regulators face a basic problem: prediction market platforms do not fit neatly into existing gambling compliance frameworks, while operators largely argue their products should be treated as financial contract trading. It said the sourcing of data used to settle contracts and the mechanisms for verifying outcomes were emerging areas of regulatory focus.

Hacksaw’s approach is different from the consumer exchanges named in that report. It supplies technology to businesses and says operators retain their customers. That model puts the regulatory question closer to existing supplier licensing than to financial exchange rules, but the answer will still depend on how each jurisdiction classifies the underlying product.

The table sets the supplier model against the consumer-platform model as the sources describe them.

Because the two models differ on who holds the customer relationship, regulators may well treat them differently, but no source reviewed addresses that question directly.

What to Watch Next

The most useful next development would be a named operator launching a product on the platform, together with the markets it will serve. Hacksaw’s release does not say when that might happen, so readers should not assume a timetable. Operator announcements and jurisdiction lists are the items that would turn a platform launch into a live product.

A second item is regulatory. The Malta statements reported in March referred to a possible legislative framework, and Gibraltar has already licensed one operator. Any further step by Malta, the MGA or other regulators would show whether the supplier-side route Hacksaw has taken is accepted more widely.

A third is the detail of the connected volume framework. If the company explains how pooled participation will operate across operators in different regulatory settings, that would clarify how the product fits rules that restrict cross-market liquidity.

Finally, Hacksaw is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. Whether it gives more information about the platform in later disclosures is not stated in the release. GamingNewsNow will cover named launches or regulatory steps as they are announced.

Sources

• Hacksaw Group — Hacksaw Group Launches B2B Prediction Markets Platform, Expanding Technology and Distribution Ecosystem (October 15, 2026)
• Malta Gaming Authority — B2B licences: game providers and back office
• iGaming Business — Malta ‘actively exploring’ statutory framework for prediction markets (March 26, 2026)
• iGaming Business — Gibraltar licenses first prediction market operator (April 1, 2026)