Amazon Ads today published a revised Gambling and Games policy in its Support Center that puts prediction markets on the same footing as online casinos and sportsbooks. Every real-money gambling advertiser covered by the page, from national lotteries to platforms selling contracts on the outcome of events, has to be verified by Amazon and show that its activity is licensed or lawful in each country it wants to reach.

The page goes further than verification. It names eight types of Amazon supply, including Prime Video, Twitch, IMDb, Amazon Music and Live Sports, as "permitted with restrictions" for gambling ads, and it carries national sections for 22 countries, among them the United States, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Mexico. Social casino games without real-money wagering or prizes are exempt from verification. Models and actors who are, or look, under 25 remain banned.

Set against Amazon's own older rulebook, the shift is large. Amazon's creative acceptance policy, which is still online and carries no date, accepts gambling campaigns only in Germany and Austria, Spain, France, Italy and the UK. It lists gambling, including online gambling, poker and bingo, as unacceptable in the US, Canada and Japan. It requires gambling campaigns to exclude Amazon's owned and operated websites and devices, and it caps them at three impressions per user every 24 hours. The page updated today mentions no cap, names Amazon's own properties as eligible supply, and gives no changelog, effective date or transition period.

In Short

Amazon has rewritten its rules for gambling ads, and every real-money gambling brand, including prediction market platforms, has to be checked by Amazon and prove it is licensed or legal in each country it targets. This affects sportsbooks, casinos, lotteries, fantasy sports and prediction market companies that want to buy ads on Prime Video, Twitch, IMDb, Amazon Music, live sports or the open internet, in a policy that names 22 countries. Amazon's older rules, still online, allowed gambling ads in only six European countries and kept them off Amazon's own sites and devices, so the new page widens where gambling ads can appear while making verification the entry ticket.

Seven categories, one verification rule

The page opens with its own summary: "Learn about real money gaming and gambling ads policies to create compliant campaigns that meet age restrictions, placement rules, and regional requirements." Its scope is broad. "This section applies to products and services such as online gambling (such as fantasy sports, sports betting, online casinos, lotteries, prediction markets), offline gambling (such as brick and mortar casinos), and social casinos," according to Amazon.

The central requirement follows. "All gambling and games advertisers must be verified by Amazon and provide evidence that their gambling and games activities are appropriately licensed by a regulator or otherwise established as lawful in the country they want to target," the page states, pointing advertisers to Amazon's existing business verification process. Seven categories are named as subject to it:

  • Online casinos
  • National or state lotteries
  • Daily fantasy sports
  • Sports betting
  • Online horse racing
  • Offline gambling establishments
  • Prediction markets

Verification is not a one-time gate. "Advertisers must maintain all required licenses, certifications, and authorizations for the duration of the time the ads are running and they must notify Amazon Ads immediately if any of the aforementioned is suspended or terminated," according to the page. The burden of reporting a lost licence sits with the advertiser, not with Amazon.

The two lists do not quite match. The scope paragraph refers to "fantasy sports" and "lotteries" in general terms, while the verification list names "daily fantasy sports" and "national or state lotteries." The page does not say whether season-long fantasy contests or privately run lotteries need verification, or where they fall if they do not.

There is also a category declaration requirement that applies to everyone, verified or not. "Advertisers must select the category that best represents their product during the account set up to ensure that accurate signals are passed to suppliers. For gambling and games, including social casinos, this is Gambling and Sports Betting," the page states. A social casino operator therefore skips verification but still carries the same Gambling and Sports Betting label as a sportsbook when its ads go out to publishers and exchanges.

On disclosures, the page defers to national law. "Where required by law, ads must include problem gambling resources, responsible gaming messages, and appropriate disclosures," according to Amazon. A separate line states that "Ads are subject to placement, time, and scheduling requirements," without saying what those requirements are.

The social casino carve-out

One sentence sets the boundary for free-to-play games: "Social casino games that do not offer real-money wagering or prizes do not require advertiser verification." The wording covers prizes as well as stakes. By that test, a social casino that pays out prizes, even without taking real-money bets, does not qualify for the exemption. The page does not mention sweepstakes models by name.

Prediction markets filed next to casinos

Amazon has no separate prediction markets policy on the page. Event contract platforms appear in the same list as online casinos and offline gambling establishments, and they face the same test: licensed by a regulator, or "otherwise established as lawful in the country they want to target."

That is a different structure from Google's. When Google opened prediction market advertising in January 2026, it limited eligibility to the United States and to two kinds of advertiser: exchanges designated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and brokerages registered with the National Futures Association, each needing Google certification and a separate application per location. State exclusions followed. Google barred prediction market ads in Ohio on June 2, 2026, where the state's position is that sports-event contracts are unlicensed gambling. By October 7, Connecticut became the fifth excluded state, after Nevada, Ohio, Michigan and New York, weeks after Connecticut's consumer protection regulator sent cease-and-desist orders to nine companies on September 10.

Amazon's page names no federal regulator, no brokerage registration and no US state. Its lawful-status test is written at country level. In the United States, a platform can hold a federal designation while a state regulator treats its sports contracts as unlicensed gambling. Which of those positions decides whether a prediction market is "established as lawful" for Amazon's purposes? The page does not say. Its targeting section adds that "Ads can only target approved countries/locales where permitted per the advertisers licensing and registration," and the word "locales" may leave room for state-level limits, but the term is not defined.

Eight supply types, including Amazon's own

The supply section is short and carries a cross-reference. "The following supply is permitted with restrictions (review the Country-specific requirements section)," according to the page. Eight entries follow:

  • Streaming TV and Prime Video
  • IMDb
  • Amazon Store - Display placement (lotteries only)
  • Fire tablet
  • Amazon Music
  • Live Sports
  • Twitch
  • Open Internet

The list covers Amazon's CTV inventory, its biggest owned media properties, its devices and the third-party web. Only one entry carries a product limit: display placements in the Amazon Store are open to lotteries only, so a sportsbook or casino cannot buy them under this page. Fire TV and Kindle are not named separately. Whether Fire TV inventory falls under Streaming TV is not stated.

Here, too, the older creative acceptance policy reads very differently. It required gambling campaigns to exclude Amazon's owned and operated sites and devices altogether, and it listed state lotteries as unacceptable on Kindle, Fire tablets and Fire TV. Fire tablets now appear on the permitted list without the lotteries-only qualifier attached to Amazon Store display.

The older page was not a full account of what Amazon's own services carried, however. Prime Video added FanDuel bet tracking and a live odds feed to its NBA coverage, announced on September 30, 2025, with viewers linking a FanDuel account to a Prime Video profile to see active bets on screen. Sports rights sit at the center of Amazon's ad pitch. Alan Moss, Amazon's vice president of global advertising sales, described Prime Video and live sports as a single business in May 2026. Today's page lists Live Sports as its own supply entry, separate from Streaming TV and Prime Video.

Twitch brings a different audience question. Brands that want to keep away from certain content on Twitch already have tools for it: Amazon DSP added content exclusion categories in December 2025, working as on-off switches across Twitch and third-party web and mobile inventory in 43 markets. The gambling page addresses Twitch only as a line in the supply list, subject to national rules.

22 countries, and one that dropped off

The country section lists 22 markets, each behind its own collapsible heading: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Compared with the older policy's six countries (Germany, Austria, Spain, France, Italy and the UK), the list adds 17 and loses one. Italy, accepted under the older page, does not appear among the 22. The US, Canada and Japan move from the unacceptable column of the older policy into the list of national sections.

The national conditions themselves sit inside the collapsible sections, and the main text of the page does not summarize them. Inclusion in the list therefore establishes that a country has its own requirements; the page does not state that every listed country accepts every gambling product, or which of the eight supply types are open in each.

That matters because the older policy carried detailed national rules that the new main text does not repeat. It required a French warning message about excessive or pathological gambling with a helpline number, a link to a responsible gambling website at least 100 pixels wide on UK ads, information on addiction risks and the ban on minors for German sports betting ads, regulator logos and a licence number in Italy, and an 18-plus logo in Spain. Whether those provisions carry over into the new country sections cannot be read from the page's main text.

Three content bans where there were a dozen

The prohibited content section is brief. Amazon bans ads that:

  • "Depict models or actors that are, or appear to be, under the age of 25."
  • "Depict irresponsible gambling behaviors (for example, chasing losses)."
  • "Make claims that are deceptive or misleading."

The age threshold of 25 carries over from the older creative acceptance policy, which used nearly the same wording. Most of the rest of the old list is gone from the main text. The older page barred gambling creative that appealed to children, depicted or referred to alcohol, denied that gambling carries risk of addiction, encouraged play beyond a person's means or referred to consumer credit, linked gambling to social, financial or sexual success, presented it as a solution to money problems or an alternative to work, or suggested that skill removes the uncertainty of winning. It also set rules for promotions: terms on the landing page or one click away, new-customer limits stated on the creative, and "risk free" claims allowed only where a losing stake was refunded in cash rather than free bets.

None of those promotional rules appears in today's text. The phrase "deceptive or misleading" is general enough to cover some of the old ground, and the reference to "chasing losses" names one specific problem gambling pattern, but the detailed list has been replaced by three lines. The new page also drops the older policy's frequency limit. Under the old rules, frequency capping for gambling campaigns was fixed at three ads per user per day; today's page sets no number.

Targeting: age, place and category

Three targeting rules close the page. "Ads can only target approved countries/locales where permitted per the advertisers licensing and registration," according to Amazon. "Ads are prohibited from targeting or appealing to individuals under the minimum legal gambling age (as defined in each locale)." And "Ad category must be accurately declared to minimize the risk of being shown on sites aimed at children, young adults, or vulnerable populations."

The second rule ties the age floor to local law rather than to a single Amazon threshold, so the minimum moves with each jurisdiction. The page does not describe how Amazon establishes a viewer's age, or whether account and profile data on Prime Video or Twitch are used to enforce the floor.

The third rule explains why the category declaration matters. Gambling is among the sensitive categories that publishers and exchanges can choose to block, and on open internet inventory the Gambling and Sports Betting label is the signal that travels with the ad. Amazon's wording, "minimize the risk," stops short of a guarantee that a correctly labelled ad will never appear on a site aimed at young people.

Why the rewrite matters

Google has spent the past year rebuilding its own gambling rules in public. It dropped end-advertiser certification for gambling ads in 37 markets on Authorized Buyers, required one application per country and barred mixed certification types in August, moved online gambling certification into the Google Ads interface in October, and opened the YouTube Masthead to certified online gambling advertisers from October 21. It has also closed doors: horse racing aggregators lost access to US gambling ads from December 1, 2025, while licensed operators kept it. Amazon's list includes online horse racing as a verified category and draws no line between operators and aggregators.

Amazon's page is far less granular than Google's documentation. It has no per-country application forms, no list of excluded US states and no published history of changes. What it does make plain is the structure: one verification gate for all real-money gambling, prediction markets included, one advertiser category passed to every supplier, and a supply list that runs from the Amazon Store to the open internet.

For sportsbooks, casinos and prediction market platforms, the effect is that Amazon's premium video and live sports inventory is written into its gambling policy, rather than sitting outside it as the older rules implied. For brands and agencies buying alongside them, the changes raise a practical question about adjacency, since gambling ads may appear in the same streams, on the same tablets and next to the same games as their own campaigns.

What the page leaves open

Several points are not addressed in today's text:

  • Timing. The page carries an update date but no effective date, transition period or note on whether advertisers already running gambling campaigns must re-verify.
  • Lawful status in the US. The page does not say whether a federal exchange designation is enough for a prediction market in states that treat sports contracts as gambling.
  • Placement, time and scheduling. The page says ads are subject to such requirements but does not list them.
  • Frequency. The older three-per-day cap is absent, and no replacement is given.
  • National rules. The contents of the 22 country sections, and whether Italy's absence means gambling ads are not accepted there, are not set out in the main text.
  • Scope edges. Season-long fantasy sports, private lotteries and sweepstakes models are not addressed directly.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads, and the advertisers its Gambling and Games policy covers: online casinos, national and state lotteries, daily fantasy sports, sports betting, online horse racing, land-based gambling venues, prediction markets and social casinos, along with the agencies that buy media for them.

What: A revised policy requiring Amazon verification and proof of licensing or lawful status for seven real-money gambling categories, prediction markets included; exempting social casino games without real-money wagering or prizes; banning ads with models or actors who are or appear to be under 25; listing eight supply types, among them Prime Video, Twitch, IMDb and the open internet, as permitted with restrictions; and setting out national sections for 22 countries. Amazon's older creative acceptance policy, still online, limited gambling ads to six European countries, kept them off Amazon's own properties and capped them at three per user per day.

When: Amazon Ads updated the page today. It gives no effective date or transition period.

Where: The Amazon Ads Support Center, under Policies and guidelines, covering 22 countries from Australia to the United States and supply across Amazon's own properties and the open internet.

Why: The page does not give a reason. It arrives as Amazon builds its ad business around live sports and Prime Video, and as Google has reworked its gambling and prediction market rules state by state and country by country through 2026. For prediction market platforms, Amazon's country-level test of lawful status leaves open how it treats federally designated US exchanges in states that regard their sports contracts as gambling.