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Utah Sen. John Curtis and California Sen. Adam Schiff are leading a bipartisan push to prevent prediction markets from offering events contracts on sports. The legislation is called the “Prediction Markets are Gambling Act".
Gambling stocks all traded higher Monday morning as U.S. senators introduced a bill banning sports bets through prediction markets. Flutter, the parent company of U.S. sports betting firm FanDuel, was up 5.0% while DraftKings was up 2.3%. The stocks are down 50% and 32%, respectively, so far this year, as investors worry that surging prediction markets could eat into the apps’ dominant share of the sports betting marketplace.
Kalshi and Polymarket, the two biggest prediction market platforms, rushed to institute new industry guardrails on Monday in response to the lawmaker's initiative.
Kalshi said it would ban political candidates from trading on their own campaigns, and it would preemptively block anyone involved in college or professional sports from trading contracts related to the sports they play or are employed by.
Polymarket instituted a broader ban than Kalshi. The company rewrote its rules to say clearly that users cannot trade on contracts where they might possess confidential information or could influence the outcome of an event. This would include athletes but could also include company officials, policymakers or anyone who would have enough influence to affect the outcome of an event or know the information in advance.
“These rule enhancements make our expectations abundantly clear for every participant across both platforms,” said Neal Kumar, Polymarket’s chief legal officer, in a statement.
The news comes after Major League Baseball announced late last week that it would be partnering with Polymarket.
MLB said in a statement Thursday it has a memorandum of understanding with Michael S. Selig, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to “further protect the integrity of baseball by ensuring swift response to incidents and anticipating emerging trends more strongly.”
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
