#prediction-markets

#prediction-markets

Includes prediction markets in the definition of gambling by specifying that the purchase, sale, or financial speculation of securities or commodities on the outcome or future contingent events related to sports, contests, people, politics, catastrophe, and death.

Sometime in the early 1970s, a young Rick Rieder sat in his elementary school cafeteria, not eating. Instead, he stared at his lunch money-a quarter-and weighed the probability of an Oakland Raiders victory. He would obsess over microdata, like how the football team played on turf versus grass, searching for a marginal edge that would turn his 25 cents into 50. Then, he'd bet. When he lost, he went hungry, he told podcaster and author William Green.

Polymarket bettors correctly predicted nearly the entire slate of Golden Globe winners last week, prompting a celebration from Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan. "We have a long way to go to educate the public on the value of market-based forecasts, but you can't deny its accuracy," Coplan wrote. "People have more clarity about the world because Polymarket exists."

The publisher worked with tech startup company Axiom (Axiom founder and CEO Jeff Yam is a Forbes board member) to build its own prediction platform - Forbes Predict - which will launch in beta in February. Unlike real-money prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket, Forbes' platform lets readers make forecasts and track results in exchange for tokens. It's designed for engagement, not wagers.

The NCAA asked a federal regulatory body Wednesday to stop prediction markets from offering trades on college sports until more safeguards are in place. In a letter addressed to the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, NCAA president Charlie Baker said the growth of prediction markets poses a threat to the well-being of student-athletes as well as the integrity of competition. "I implore you to suspend collegiate sport prediction markets until a more robust system with appropriate safeguards is in place," Baker wrote.

Dow Jones said Wednesday it has entered an exclusive partnership with Polymarket to distribute real-time prediction market data across its consumer news platforms, marking a big and mainstream expansion of alternative market signals into some of the most widely read financial publications in the world. Under the agreement, Polymarket's prediction data will appear across Dow Jones digital properties, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and Investor's Business Daily.

Enten began by telling anchor Sara Sidner, I will just note it is never, never too early to talk about this because these guys are running already, even if they haven't formally declared. They're already running, and JD Vance is running well ahead of the field. I mean, take a look here. Top chances to be the 2028 GOP press nominee, the prediction market odds.

In this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel explores the burgeoning industry of prediction markets. These platforms let people wager on everything from elections and award shows to the most trivial internet ephemera, framing bets as tradable "shares" that rise and fall like stocks. With billions in weekly trading volume, massive new funding rounds, and even a CNN partnership with the prediction-betting platform, Kalshi, prediction markets are quickly moving from niche curiosity to mainstream-media fixture-openly touting ambitions to financialize everything.

Robinhood is betting that its customers want to trade on absolutely everything. On Tuesday, the popular stock-trading app unveiled a slate of updates to its prediction markets business, aggressively expanding into sports. Now, Robinhood users can trade contracts tied to specific professional football players' performances, as well as pre-packaged combos for individual games. Early next year, customers will be able to combine up to ten outcomes - such as winners, spreads, and totals - into a single, custom-built contract.

Besides blocking users from reading its website with an AI chatbot, the magazine anointed the "architects of AI" as its most important visionaries of 2025, eschewing the definition of "person" yet again. The eyeroll-inducing announcement was met with plenty of incredulity, especially considering the astronomical amount of money being spent on building out data centers, their enormous carbon footprint, and a whole litany of other ethical conundrums that the embrace of generative AI has spawned.

Time Magazine revealed its Person of the Year for 2025. It wasn't one person, but many different people who are all at the helm of pushing AI technology. This has caused some prediction market gamblers who had bet on AI itself earning the distinction to start yelling a lot online. It's very funny, but also a horrible glimpse at our bet-on-everything future.

Kalshi and Polymarket maintain their platforms offer "event contracts" between private parties that should be regulated like commodities rather than traditional gambling subject to state oversight; an argument that has received pushback from government officials, NBC Chicago said. Companies like Kalshi and Polymarket should "package sports betting as events contracts" to circumvent established gaming regulations, state attorneys general claimed in a lawsuit in June.

Consistent with the United States' continued slide into an economy powered almost entirely by LLM slop, financialization, and ever-pervasive exploitative gambling, "prediction market app" Kalshi "entered into an official partnership" with CNN this week to bring their "data to CNN's journalism across its television, digital and social channels." Soon, CNN will run live odds on world events where its viewers can gamble on them in real time on their smartphones.

The Axios report continued: The collaboration marks the first major news partnership for Kalshi, as it looks to establish itself as the most authoritative source of information about the real-time probabilities of major cultural and political future events, CEO and co-founder Tarek Mansour tells Axios. As part of the deal, Kalshi prediction data will be featured on-air as a real-time data ticker. There will also be prediction market content related to politics, news, culture and weather,