There are endless stories and hot takes about people betting on wildfires…even though no one is actually offering markets on fires. And there are lots of people yelling about betting on drug trials. What exactly is going on? Daniel O’Boyle of InGame breaks that down and all the recent news in prediction markets.
To wit, prediction markets on drug trials made NPR’s All Things Considered:
Kalshi and Polymarket bets on clinical trials criticized as ‘ghastly’: “‘What seemed to be missed in the CEO statements was the fact that there were going to be patients on the other side of these bets,’ said Pederson, who is a humanities professor at Boston University.”
“Bettors will make or lose money based on the success or failure of a clinical trial, a situation Pederson views as horrific.”
I also sat down with ProphetX co-founder Jake Benzaquen (36-minute mark) to talk about the company’s journey to becoming a federally regulated exchange.
Show notes:
Wildfire betting: https://www.merkley.senate.gov/merkley-padilla-shaheen-schiff-rosen-cortez-masto-heinrich-wyden-klobuchar-cftc-must-rein-in-wildfire-bets-on-prediction-markets/
Betting on drug trials: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/business/kalshi-polymarket-prediction-market-drugs.html
DraftKings Q2: https://www.ingame.com/overlap-draftkings-sportsbook-kalshi-users/
Flutter Q2: https://www.ingame.com/fanduel-flutter-earnings-call-dcm-exchange/
Polymarket + Yankees: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/polymarket-becomes-an-official-prediction-market-partner-of-the-new-york-yankees-302844285.html
Elections + PMs:
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The Event Horizon briefing
A quick look at what matters most in prediction markets.
📍 The Big Story
CFTC tells prediction markets to knock off using American odds
From a CFTC press release: The Division of Market Oversight and the Market Participants Division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently issued a letter to remind Commission-regulated entities involved in the listing, soliciting, or acceptance of event contracts of their responsibility not to mislead consumers, including the obligation to display clear and accurate pricing information for derivatives products.
Registered entities and persons must uphold regulatory standards and foster clear understanding of the products offered within CFTC-regulated markets, including through the oversight of intermediary market participants, affiliates, and partners.
Commission staff warned that displaying pricing information in the “American” odds format used by casino gambling bookmakers is likely to mislead market participants about the nature of the transaction and may deprive users of access to indicia of market depth and pricing impact.
Market participants should display information, including pricing information, that indicates to consumers when a product is an event contract on a CFTC-regulated exchange, rather than a higher-margin, non-market-priced bookmaking product.
The divisions reminded regulated entities and persons that displaying misleading pricing information in connection with any regulated product risks violating federal law prohibiting the use of manipulative devices.
You can check out the full letter below.
Bloomberg had the news first, and added this context:
“As a federally regulated exchange, Kalshi follows CFTC guidance and will comply with the letter by its deadline,” Jacki McGavick, a spokesperson for Kalshi, said in an email.
🔍 The toothpaste is already kind of out of the tube on this… Kalshi has advertised its product as sports betting — with or without American odds — on many occasions (but not of late).
Also, a sportsbook could display something other than American odds, and that doesn’t really change the underlying product.
At the same time, it’s nice to see the CFTC drawing at least one line in the sand.
I have a lot more thoughts about this; I’ll save the rest for another day. I enjoyed this tweet, however:
Plus EV Analytics@PlusEVAnalyticsCFTC cracking down on American odds
2:13 AM · Aug 9, 2026 · 5.15K Views3 Replies · 2 Reposts · 25 Likes
🔭 What To Watch For
To use NCAA team logos or not to use team logos?
A quick update from Friday’s newsletter… Kalshi was using college logos for a short time, but they appear to be gone. At least for me:
The NCAA very much does not like prediction markets. Kalshi is using NFL mascot names on football markets, but not logos; it only uses city names for baseball. (Polymarket US has a deal with MLB and uses team logos. It has not displayed college logos.)
Will there be more marketing deals like Kalshi and Polymarket have with the NHL eventually? The NBA would seemingly be the most likely next domino to fall among the major North American sports leagues.
🔥 Hot Market
2028 Democratic nominee for president
Prediction markets have three politicians with similar odds: Gavin Newsom, Jon Ossoff and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the market has “the field” with better odds than that trio:
📝 New Event Contracts
Self-certifications recently listed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission:
Underdog filed for new Major League Soccer markets:
💬 Quote Of The Day
From Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour’s interview with the New York Times (see more and link below):
Q: What’s the worst piece of advice given to young founders today?
Mansour: The worst advice that most people get is that you should go and seek out a bunch of advice. There’s really no recipe to any of this stuff.
People are over-reliant on advice, and people love giving advice because it makes them feel smart and powerful. It’s usually mostly trash.
📊 Volume Tracking For Saturday, Aug. 8
Kalshi volume: $1.27 billion
Sports + parlays: 83.7% of volume (46% of all volume was parlays)
Crypto markets: 15.2% of volume
Trend line from Ticker Tracker:
News roundup
Everything else important that happened in or was written about prediction markets:
🚨 Important stuff
Kalshi’s C.E.O. Isn’t Interested in Management Advice (NYT): There’s a lot in here that’s interesting, of course, but Tarek Mansour talks about sports events, which he doesn’t often do:
Mansour: Yes, people like to trade on sports. Our users are people who like math, they like economics, they like trading. They like thinking about probabilities and what’s happening, what impacts probability, what are the different factors. Sports is an amazing training ground for something like that.
NYT: And the numbers?
Mansour: It was like 95 percent last year. I think it’s closer to two-thirds today. Sports has a lot of events per week. There are not hundreds of political races every week. Sports has been an incredible enabler of liquidity and growth in all the other categories, like crypto and politics and finance and economics. They’re all growing significantly faster than they were before sports.
🔍 I think their average user just likes to bet on sports, rather than being fascinated with math. But I am sure there is a cohort that fits that description.
I am glad to see we might be getting away from this idea that “everything else” will flip sports any time soon. Acknowledging there are just more things to trade/bet on in sports is fine to say!
I haven’t seen a day where sports + parlays (which are almost entirely sports) dipped to two-thirds of volume, but it has been trending toward 75% after the World Cup. For the trailing 30 days, sports + parlays accounting for about 80% of volume, per Ticker Tracker.
I am also glad to see Kalshi is not trying to classify combos/parlays as non-sports volume, like this silly account does.
Crypto is definitely growing a lot, mostly because of 15-minute markets. Everything else is still a very small part of what is happening at Kalshi.
Crypto.com and Trump Media and Technology Group to Realign Integration Partnership to Marketing Agreement (press release): Crypto.com and Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (NASDAQ, NYSE Texas: DJT) (“Trump Media”) today jointly announced changes to their previously announced prediction market integration.
Rather than develop a direct prediction market integration on Truth Social, the companies will pivot to a marketing agreement under which Crypto.com’s prediction markets experiences will be marketed to the Truth Social user base.
“Our strategic focus is to drive revenue across Truth Social, continue to build our global media business, and close the merger with TAE,” said Kevin McGurn, Interim CEO of TMTG. “This marketing agreement better aligns with our priorities and will put Crypto.com’s prediction market experiences in front of a highly engaged digital audience.”
🤔 The fact that we’ve gone from Truth Social directly integrating prediction markets to this is kind of strange. There’s clearly the possibility of real revenue if there were an integration with the social media platform, even if that plan is being abandoned.
Kalshi has temporarily stopped mention markets for broadcasts of sporting events: That dates back more than a week. From Kalshi’s Discord:
⚖️ Legal and regulatory news
K Street bearish on prediction market limits (Punchbowl): “A clear majority (57%) of K Street respondents said they did not believe Congress would take action to further outlaw insider trading by public officials on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Our survey was conducted in partnership with the Locust Street Group between July 6-24.”
🔍 Even though people on Capitol Hill like to talk about the issue, propose legislation and hold hearings, I too am skeptical we’ll see anything actually get to the finish line.
Coinbase denied Michigan preliminary injunction on sports contracts (SBC Americas): “According to documents filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, Coinbase has been denied a preliminary injunction in the Wolverine State, subjecting the company to potential enforcement action by state officials and agencies for offering sports event contracts without a gaming license.”
Kalshi urges judge to block Iowa from regulating prediction market (Courthouse News Service): “Prediction market platform Kalshi told a federal judge Friday Iowa should be permanently blocked from regulating the business under state gambling laws because the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has exclusive regulatory jurisdiction that preempts state action.”
Polymarket sued for $170K over Trump ‘Khamenei’ prediction bet (New York Post): “A Polymarket bettor who says he correctly predicted President Trump would say “Khamenei” back in March is suing the prediction market giant for $170,000 in damages after the site claimed Trump never said the word.”
📖 Everything else you should know/read
DRAFTKINGS CEO: PREDICTION MARKETS ARE ‘PEER-TO-WALL STREET’ (Sportico): “The biggest prediction market companies have been eager to position their products as ‘peer-to-peer,’ pitting average Joes against other opinionated casuals. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, who raved Friday to analysts about the underlying economics of his own predictions product, is taking a different approach.”
“The thing that worries me is that some of the predictions guys out there are positioning this as peer-to-peer when it’s really not,” Robins said in an interview. “It is technically, but it’s really more peer-to-Wall Street, peer-to-professional bettor or peer-to-market maker. … You’ve got to present the product as what it is.”
More with Robins here and below:
Lockerbie trial jury instructions set to include warning about prediction markets (The National): “Proposed jury instructions for the trial of a suspect accused of bringing down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 include a warning about online prediction and betting markets.”
Rapid Fire: Prediction markets test 15-minute trading (Live Now Fox):
Regulating the Prediction Market Boom (The Regulatory Review): “In this week’s Saturday Seminar, scholars examine the legal status of prediction markets, debate the proper scope of the CFTC’s authority, and assess the relationship between commodities regulation and state gambling law. They also consider the risks prediction markets pose to information integrity and public trust as they expand into contested political and social subjects, proposing reforms for regulating event contracts.”
“In a forthcoming article in the University of Illinois Law Review, John T. Holden and Matthew Turk of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and Marc Edelman of Baruch College argue that sports prediction markets represent “one of the starkest cases of regulatory arbitrage that can be imagined.” They explain that platforms like Kalshi structure sports wagers as derivatives to migrate from state gaming commission oversight to the CFTC’s jurisdiction, thereby avoiding state taxes, licenses, and consumer protection rules.”
51% of Prediction Market Users Borrowed Money to Fund Bets (Bad Credit): “A new BadCredit.org survey found that 15% of U.S. adults have used a prediction-market platform such as Kalshi, Polymarket, or PredictIt. Among users, 51% said they have used a credit card, personal loan, or other borrowed money to fund bets, while 79% reported losing money in the past year.
Income was the most common reason for joining a prediction-market platform: 53% started either to make extra money or because they were financially struggling and needed another income stream. … The margin of error for findings among prediction-market users is approximately ±8.0 percentage points.”
“Although tempting, borrowing money to place a bet is a universally bad idea. Look at the data. 88% who do so see losses, not gains. Remember that credit products aren’t designed for this purpose. They are to help you finance things you want and need, and are sure that you can handle the payments.“ - Erica Sandberg, consumer finance expert at BadCredit.org
Does Wealthsimple want to add sports, politics to its new prediction markets product? (The Star): “When Charles Martineau, an associate professor of finance at the University of Toronto, and Marius Zoican, the Canada Research Chair in financial technology, each logged onto Wealthsimple’s Predict app, they found it displaying stakes in who will become the next James Bond, what the score will be at future football games and who will win the 2028 U.S. presidential election. … Clicking on any of the subjects revealed a note from Wealthsimple offering to notify the user if trading becomes available.”
