Yes, Kalshi Is Still Marketing Itself As A Betting Platform
Instagram ad says: “Bet on the NFL, Legal in 50 states.” Prediction markets roundup: Polymarket is hiring a head of sports, The Washington Post covers betting on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
Kalshi has been more careful about how it markets its prediction market platform to the masses in the wake of legal and regulatory pushback.
But, from time to time, its marketing/social media teams still use “betting” terminology.
A loyal subscriber got this ad in New York today on Instagram, saying you can “Bet on the NFL, Legal in 50 states.”
I’ve been tracking their use of betting language for a while, and this post has appeared in many of the lawsuits involving Kalshi that have cropped up this year:
I also did an update on this trend in June.
Kalshi likes to have its cake and eat it too, claiming that:
It’s absolutely not sports betting/gambling. In April, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said this in an interview with Axios: "I just don't really know what this has to do with gambling," he said at an office in Washington. "If we are gambling, then I think you're basically calling the entire financial market gambling."
Betting terminology doesn’t matter because it has been used around financial trading since the dawn of markets.
It has “safeguards that include deposit limits, self-exclusion tools”: things that exist for gambling, and generally not for “trading.” (Maybe they should exist for trading, but that’s a topic for another day. And to be clear, I applaud that Kalshi has these things, but they are also so buried in the UX that it would be pretty difficult to find them organically. See if you can find them if you have the Kalshi app.)
Kalshi also seems to argue there’s some meaningful distance between the words “betting” and “gambling” when that’s not really the case.
Words obviously matter somewhat, because Kalshi has toned down using betting terminology in most of its marketing … at least until this IG ad came across my desk.
Prediction markets roundup
Polymarket hiring head of sports: The listing on LinkedIn went up yesterday, and it’s already closed. From the listing:
“Polymarket is seeking a Head of Sports — a senior product leader to own and scale our sports vertical end-to-end. This is not a narrow PM role: you’ll be responsible for the strategy, product, operations, and growth of Polymarket’s sports offering. You’ll shape the future of how sports markets are created, traded, and experienced on Polymarket. From market generation automation to liquidity relationships, from product innovation (leverage, parlays, pari-mutuel structures) to oracle improvements — you’ll run the full stack of sports. Your mandate is simple: make Polymarket’s sports product the best in the world. This role requires deep product instincts, strong technical ability, and domain expertise in sports betting — ideally with experience at sports betting exchanges.”
Polymarket is coming to the US as a regulated prediction market sometime in the coming weeks or months.
Crypto.com just started ramping up its prediction markets and sports offering. Kalshi is already largely a sports betting exchange, with 50-80% of trading volume coming on sports events in any given week. That percentage could climb to 80-90% with the start of NFL season.
Many Taylor Swift fans expected her engagement. Some bet on it (The Washington Post): “When Taylor Swift announced her next album during an appearance on a podcast co-hosted by her boyfriend and his brother, casual fan Blake Law had a “hunch” that the pop star might have some other big news on the horizon. Law isn’t an obsessive Swiftie. The 23-year-old Atlanta resident spends his days making wagers on Kalshi, an online prediction market where people buy and trade stakes in certain future outcomes — similar to stocks or bonds. Bets can be placed on elections, sports, hurricanes and cultural events such as a music megastar’s change in relationship status. This month he made a modest bet that Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce would get engaged by the end of year. On Tuesday, he made about $1,000 off that wager.”
DeFi startup Gondor secures angel funding to unlock Polymarket liquidity (Crypto.news): “Gondor, a DeFi startup backed by Maven11 Capital and others, has completed an angel round to launch a lending protocol that lets traders borrow against their Polymarket positions. Gondor, a decentralized finance startup building a ‘DeFi layer for prediction markets,’ has announced the completion of its angel round of funding."