New Poll: 3% Of Americans Say They Trade On Prediction Markets
Roundup: John Oliver tackles prediction markets on Last Week Tonight; more reporting on Polymarket's latest fundraising efforts.
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A new NBC News Decision Desk poll featured a few questions that touched on prediction markets. What did the poll tell us?
A pretty small percentage of Americans actually use prediction markets for trading, which lines up directionally with recent data.
Only 30% said they have not heard of prediction markets. If that number is right, it would be tremendous penetration into the national consciousness in a short amount of time.
Survey respondents were pretty split about how prediction markets should be handled from a legal/regulatory standpoint.
Here is the data from the poll:
Another recent poll said that about 42% of respondents had never heard of prediction markets. If nothing else, prediction markets continue their ascent in the mainstream just by being included in an NBC News poll!
H/T CNN’s Marshall Cohen for spotting the poll.
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📊 The Ticker
For Sunday, April 19, at Kalshi:
Volume: $511.1M
Sports + parlays markets: 90.1% of volume
Crypto markets: 8.6% of volume
Top 10 markets on Sunday:
Trend line for daily volume:
Polymarket US volume on Sunday: $33.7 million
Prediction markets roundup
🚨 The important stuff
John Oliver got into prediction markets on Last Week Tonight:
Coverage from AV Club.
Polymarket in Talks for New Investment at $15 Billion Valuation (Bloomberg): “Polymarket is seeking an additional $400 million in funding, according to people familiar with the negotiations, after securing $600 million at a $15 billion valuation last month. The new deal brings the prediction market startup’s value up from $9 billion last year.”
👀 It’s interesting to note that it may be raising with no further increase in its valuation. Per Bloomberg: “Polymarket is considering whether to raise the additional $400 million from new investors at the $15 billion valuation, which includes the new money, or wait until it can attract a higher valuation." Polymarket would clearly like to get closer to the Kalshi number (reportedly raised at $22B valuation) for narrative and vanity reasons, if nothing else.
Unregulated prediction market may endanger US national security, experts and lawmakers warn (Military Times): “Before and since the Iran war began, though, Polymarket has created war-related markets that users can bet on, raising concerns over the illegality and ethics of those specific bets. Polymarket did not respond to requests for comment. Experts and lawmakers told Military Times that while the latter two concerns were front of mind, along with insider trading, the bets could also jeopardize national security.”
Strait And Wide: Some Prediction Market Self-Certifications Are Broad Enough To Cover Almost Anything (InGame): “Kalshi’s contract on when traffic will return to normal in the Strait of Hormuz has attracted $4.5 million in volume. Contracts on weekly traffic through the strait have done hundreds of thousands more for each week since it first closed in early March. These contracts sit at an awkward intersection of conflict and global trade. The market is undeniably economically valuable, but it is also deeply tied to war.”
⚖️ Legal and regulation
Some interesting tidbits from NPR’s Bobby Allyn:
Bobby Allyn@BobbyAllynA federal class-action lawsuit against Kalshi newly refiled this month cites a now-deleted Reddit comment where @mansourtarek_ says "we also avoid anything that could be interpreted as 'gaming' (like sports), as that is illegal under federal law." documentcloud.org/documents/2806…
7:06 PM · Apr 20, 2026 · 33.3K Views3 Replies · 10 Reposts · 45 LikesBobby Allyn@BobbyAllynIt also points to a now-deleted post from former Kalshi employee @eightyhi, where he says: "this is gambling. it's gambling. prediction markets are gambling."
7:10 PM · Apr 20, 2026 · 4.16K Views1 Reply · 3 Reposts · 13 LikesUtah Sen. John Curtis wants to legally define prediction markets as gambling (Utah Public Radio): “This is an issue that’s just kind of coming into consciousness for people,” Curtis said. “My other co-sponsors and I were not really trying to solve all of the problems with predictive markets. We’re narrowing in on a slice of it with this bill.”
Curtis assured the act will have little to no effect on the economy.
”Anybody that looks at gambling knows it’s a regressive tax, and so the impact of us not controlling this is far more detrimental,” Curtis said.
Why are officials in CT seeking to regulate prediction markets? (CT Mirror): “There are a litany of legislative proposals seeking to rein in prediction markets. Both of Connecticut’s Democratic senators introduced their own bills last month.”
Watch CNBC’s full interview with SEC Chairman Paul Atkins (CNBC): “SEC Chairman Paul Atkins joins ‘Squawk Box’ to discuss the agency’s priorities nearly one year on the job as chairman, efforts to boost IPO activity, the agency’s enforcement activity, future of prediction markets, private credit risks, and more.”
The latest from Straight to the Point:
📣 Industry news
Lazio’s US$22m Polymarket deal might not spark a European prediction market sponsorship boom (SportsPro): “Serie A giants Lazio have agreed a new front of shirt sponsorship deal with prediction market operator Polymarket worth at least US$22 million– the company’s such partnership with a major European soccer team. … However, legislation in several European countries is explicitly clear that any activity described by prediction market operators would be treated as betting operators and subject to the same oversight. This is true in Italy, where Polymarket would require a licence from regulator ADM.”
📍Like a lot of prediction market deals of late, I would imagine this is mostly predicated on gaining legitimacy than anything else. As some parties try to paint Polymarket as an offshore exchange, more deals like this will make it more difficult for that argument to take root. Is a Serie A team partnering with an offshore operator? Is Major League Baseball?
But a jersey sponsorship at a top-level Italian club also gives Polymarket a lot of international reach.
Lobbying update:
Dan Bernstein@dan_bernstein_Kalshi reported another $60,000 to Resolution Public Affairs about an hour and a half after this post. So the up to date number is $760,000.
Dan Bernstein @dan_bernstein_With new disclosures, Kalshi is up to $700,000 in federal lobbying spend for Q1 2026. Kalshi reported ~$1 million for all of last year.10:58 PM · Apr 20, 2026 · 742 Views2 Likes
📖 Everything else you should know/read
Kalshi’s fight over sports betting is hurtling toward the Supreme Court—and the future of gambling is at stake (Fortune): “Right now it is the industry,” says Dustin Gouker, describing how much sports betting contributes to the prediction markets industry. Gouker, who publishes a newsletter devoted to the sector, believes that other categories, including wagers related to politics and crypto prices, will make up a greater share of prediction market bets over time.
The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency (BBC): “Throughout US President Donald Trump’s second term in office, traders have been betting millions of dollars just before he makes major announcements. The BBC has examined trade volume data on several financial markets and matched them to some of the president’s most significant market-moving statements. It found a consistent pattern of spikes just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview was made public.”
“Some analysts say it bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, whereby bets are made by people based on information that is not available to the general public. Others say the picture is more complicated and that some traders have become more adept at anticipating the president’s interventions.”
There’s a free-to-trade prediction market for flight delays!
You can’t beat the house: A portfolio manager’s POV on prediction markets and sports betting (Investment News): For a growing number of retail users, that means the ability to trade on everything from election outcomes and macroeconomic data to sports and crypto events. For advisors, it raises a more basic question: is this investing, or just a new wrapper on gambling behavior that can quietly undermine clients’ plans? Brian Jacobs, a portfolio manager and advisor at Aptus Capital, leans firmly toward the latter view.
“It used to be that you’d have to drive to a casino to lose money. Now you can do it in your bedroom, on your phone, the moment you wake up,” Jacobs told InvestmentNews. “To me, it’s more akin to betting and gambling than investing.”
He Quit His Job to Bet on Prediction Markets Full-Time: Why Casual Bettors Should Think Twice (24/7 Wall St.): “Logan Suddath, 25, quit his job at a private credit firm after realizing he was earning more betting on prediction markets after work than from his entire annual salary. His approach is methodical. He earned over $40,000 predicting Time Magazine’s Person of the Year by analyzing which subjects the magazine had been covering most heavily.”
“To me, the prediction market story rhymes almost perfectly with what happened in options trading and crypto. A new venue opens up, early participants find genuine edge, word spreads, and then the professionals arrive with more time, better tools, and no day job pulling their attention away.”
My latest at The Closing Line, which has some intersection with prediction markets and its impact on state-regulated sports betting.
Forbes Prediction Market Gamifies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children (404): In another sign that the depravity economy has no bottom, Forbes published a story about a Louisiana man that killed 8 children over the weekend containing a box that asked readers to predict whether Congress would do anything about gun control. Citation Needed author Molly White first spotted the box and shared it on Bluesky.”
Gaming in transition: East Coast Gaming Congress takes on AI, prediction markets, new competition (iGB): “Of those three, the threat from an increasingly capitalised prediction-market industry dominated discussion across much of the educational program. The subject of how the casino industry can deal with what several panelists called the “existential threat” posed by predictions trading markets came up in several panel discussions in the conference, as well as several of the “Industry Leader” presentations from top industry executives.”
Prediction Markets Expect Prolonged Strait of Hormuz Disruption—And Oil Traders Are Betting Big (Decrypt): “Traders on the prediction market Polymarket place odds at just 28% that shipping traffic returns to normal to the Strait of Hormuz by April 30—even after Iran and the U.S. declared a ceasefire, and Tehran claimed to reopen the waterway.”
The startup database
I created a database of startups in the prediction markets industry of companies that asked to be listed. That’s below.
Want to be a part of the database? Fill out this Google Form. I will try to add new companies soon… I’ve had more responses since I launched it.
That 70% awareness to 3% trading ratio is the number worth watching. Sports betting followed a similar curve after Murphy v. NCAA in 2018: awareness was widespread almost immediately, but actual participation took five years to reach roughly 20% of adults. The conversion bottleneck wasn't interest or legality, it was habit formation and distribution (DraftKings and FanDuel already had the installed base). Prediction markets don't have that equivalent yet. Kalshi's sports/parlays at 90% of volume suggests they're borrowing someone else's habit loop rather than building a native one, which might be the fastest path to closing that gap.