Most of the top level comments support scrapping the deal, most of them on the basis that "sports gambling is a cancer." A cancer for whom? I want to take the opposite position: let people do whatever they want, as long as they bear the consequences of their decisions instead of socializing the risk. You don't like betting or gambling? Great, then don't do it. But forcing your preferences on others is not the way.
At a minimum, if it was going to be legal why could they not have restricted the advertising like we do with tobacco ads? At this point the sports broadcasts themselves are advertisements.
The stock market isn't fundamentally a gamble. Spending money to buy a share of a company's future dividends is a sound way to invest money and earn a return on it.
The problem with the stock market is when there aren't enough new companies going public to soak up the spigot of all the capital that people want to invest, leading average P/E ratios to increase over time. There is too much money chasing too few earnings. When the underlying fundamentals don't match up, then all that investors are doing is speculating that someone else will be the bigger fool and buy from them at an even more unreasonable price - and that is a gamble.
You want short term trading because you want the prices to be as close to efficient as possible.
You may never trade short term but at some point you are going to buy and at some point you are going to sell. Market being far from efficient one would hurt you there.
So let them trade and discover price. You don't have to play that game but you still benefit.
I would say prediction markets are more dangerous since they don't claim its gambling while sports gambling is much more explicit (not that the industry is a saint by any means)
obviously and definitely true in their current form. But it's maybe worth clarifying that before this last year or two, when Kalshi became an obvious regulatory dodge (including adding sports and really leaning into the gambling demographic), many were interested in prediction markets not just for that purpose: e.g. the rationalist community seems to have had a longstanding interest in the idea, manifold didn't have real money, and predictit (which is like a decade old) had academic origins.
As a tangent, it reminds me a bit of cryptocurrency: in the earliest days the interested parties have a mix of intellectual (can it be done? How can it be done?) and some idealistic (this technology will have utility, like reducing spam or libertarianism for crypto, or giving us a more accurate and precise understanding of the world for prediction markets) values. Of course, as both are directly financial, the third value is that one stands to get rich off of the technology. This third value might be adequately communally suppressed in the beginning, but the force of money gradually makes this third value the only one that matters, and both technologies become net-negatives on humanity.
Do you have any sources for this? My understanding is that all of the discussion about prediction market wildfires are completely speculative, nobody has actually started a wildfire for a prediction market payout yet.
I've been in the desert fighting fires for the last 4 months. The news isn't going rampant with the arson stories for obvious reasons that I probably do in fact have to explain to you since you're even asking this ridiculous question.
Open the watchduty app and start looking into how many fires are currently arson suspected and how this is the largest national wildfire year we've ever had.
The Dick and Cleetus methheads doing this stuff aren't the brightest and most well informed tech risk takers out there. Most of them will get caught and never get a dime, who the hell knows how why else they're causing fires, the FBI isn't investigating anyone.
How is it unjust? A company is not owed any profits, if it gets rekt by an union then it gets rekt. It cannot say "oh its not fair you guys are fighting me, only I can fight you in a just fight!" Ridiculous logic.
"Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it."
– Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, describing how he stopped using sarcasm in his essays because it provokes hostility. He goes on describe the ironic person as a "pest to society."
> GP is in favor of unions and thinks they perform beneficial public services. They don't.
They don't provide beneficial public services. The beneficial public service is squeezing the most you can out of every employee, which unions unjustly resist. Every employee should be isolated to the greatest extent possible, it's what's best for the market.
> Both unions (as legally constructed in the US) and sports gambling are cancers.
What's wrong with sports gambling? No one's forcing anyone to play, and it's a highly lucrative business with lots of customers.
Unions, on the other hand, involuntarily infringe on the freedoms of business owners to wield their economic power for their own benefit as they see fit.
You do realise that countries other than the USA exist, right? The UK has had various forms of sports gambling legal for nearly 100 years and society hasn't crumbled and neither did sport.
You've been able to gamble on your mobile device for 100 years in the UK?
Modern gambling isn't you talking to a bookie and putting down $100 on your favorite team. That should still be legal. Phone apps which learn your behavior, your favorite teams, the offers you are likely to accept, the time of day that you're most likely to make a bet, etc etc and use that to barrage you with notifications, "free" plays, high paying parlays with horrible odds, should not be.
Society bears the downsides of gambling and gambling addiction, while the casinos gather all of the upside.
"A more recent survey in 2022, conducted by the United Kingdom Gambling Commission found that 'headline problem gambling rate is statistically stable at 0.2%. The moderate risk and low risk rates are also statistically stable at 0.9% and 1.4% respectively.'[45]"
Sports gambling is controlled by FTC in the US. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket found a loophole where they can run gambling operations under CFTC and and not be controlled by FTC. There needs to be some legislative actions from the Congress to close the loophole.
It's a lazy argument imo. As corrupt as they might be there is way more money to make in the stock market or bond market if you have insider info.
There is little reason for them to go after peanuts in the prediction markets.
Searched the quote and you neglected to elaborate on how small the number is:
> Health service figures show that from April to September 2024, 1,914 people were treated at NHS gambling clinics. This compares to the previous financial year when a total of 1,389 patients were cared for. In 2022-23 this number was 1,013, and in 2020-21 it was 775 patients.
I get that you're probably trying to make a point that it's bad for everyone in general, but the US is on a completely different level of societal corruption from all of this.
Yeah, it's just like being able to take an insurance policy on other people's lives. It's a wonderful idea for all of 15 minutes until people start getting murdered.
> bare minimum of regulation
No amount of regulation will solve the issue when what you can take insurance on is not regulated.
Prediction markets are to insurance the same as crypto is to banking: a speedrun of all the frauds that happened in the past until the perpetrators are sent to jail or regulated so heavily that they are virtually identical to what they were supposed to disrupt.
They don't have much to say about Kalshi other than "unlike real mainstream journalism, there’s no accountability". Which isn't saying much, because nobody is claiming prediction markets are a type of journalism.
I really don’t understand how these markets survive a competent DOJ considering the rate they’re having to ban people for “insider trading”. Fully appreciate the Unions position here.
Most competent people at the DOJ have either been fired or left. And the current administration seems to love insider trading, so long as they can be the insiders doing the trading.
Same old story, on a whole new scale. Donny Junior has a piece the numbers game on the east side, so the family makes sure the cops don’t come round asking too many questions…
It lasts for now, it won’t survive when the political pendulum swings back. “Make hay grifting while the grifters shine.” is the current MO. “Temporary economic strip mining operation.”
Insider trading is legal in commodities markets. If I am engaged in a hedging transaction I am doing so because I know about risks that I want to offload, and the buyer does also. You don't come to commodities markets without information.
Hedging is not insider trading. Insider trading is trading based on material non-public information in breach of a duty or obtained through fraud. In that sense, it's more of a principal-agent problem.
Also -- hedging is generally not done based on material non-public information, but rather to guard against known risks. Joe the farmer sells a bunch of wheat futures when he plants his wheat, not because he thinks the price will go down, but rather because if it does he goes bankrupt and he'd prefer to accept a known rate-of-return now.
Note that's a US definition — Europe is stricter and draws the line at non-public information [0], aside from certain carveouts and safe harbors. Matt Levine describes this as "theft" (misappropriating nonpublic information) vs. "fairness" (using nonpublic information at all) — iirc if you're on a flight and overhear a passenger in business class talking about an upcoming merger they're working on, that's legal to trade on in the US but illegal in Europe. At least that's what I generally remember about "parity-of-information" theory.
If you and the buyer know about the risks then you’re not making a trade based on material non public information, are you?
If you make a hedging trade while having material knowledge that you withhold from the counterparty… well, that sounds like it could be edging towards fraud. Like taking out life insurance while hiding a medical condition.
But sure, it’s not against the law to do business with a sucker, so there’s degrees here.
Just for context that’s not quite accurate. There certainly is a distinction in the rule versus securities markets, which I know is what you mean.
But it’s more accurate to say participants can trade on lawfully obtained material nonpublic information absent some independent duty not to use it, which is much narrower than saying insider trading is generally legal.
Exactly. Pit mine sees who's buying what and is worried copper will go down. Datacenter people see who's inking deals and are worried it's gonna go up. They both need to get big fancy loans from their bankers to execute their upcoming projects. The bankers won't like to see unbounded risk on their balance sheets. A futures contract exists to solve this problem.
Not that this excuses some of the absurd stuff that goes on on the online betting platforms...
Got really confused as why my granola bar company was signing a deal with the NYT and The Athletic, and why this was deemed so controversial, then I used Google and learned the difference between Kashi and Kalshi.
what happened with Bill Simmons bragging about using his daughter's boyfriend to place proxy bets for him on FanDuel (who Bill is partnered with) is endlessly entertaining
Trump Jr. just pumped 300 million into Polymarket and also has a stake in Kalshi so, i'm not sure who thinks the DOJ will really do anything. this is fentanyl on the phone but there will have to be a few examples like some low-levels House members or state senators alongside sports casualites
Someone tampered with the weather equipment at Charles de Gaulle airport for a Polymarket bet. This sort of thing is going to become so much more common going forward.
There was also a story about a reporter who wrote a story about a missile strike and people who had bet against a missile strike applied a lot of pressure, including death threats, on the reporter to change his story.
I find it really interesting that online sports betting, which has been a thing in my country for 15+ years and largely a non-issue, is suddenly a total shitshow once it gets legalised in the US. I feel like the US always takes things too far. I watch quite a few US sports and former athletes giving betting suggestions during broadcasts is absolutely insane. How can you go from being so restrictive to having absolutely no limits overnight? To make matters worse I get the feeling the TV companies here are taking pointers from their US colleagues and starting to force us down the same path.
It was banned by the federal government in 1992 by an act of Congress (with bipartisan consensus and signed into law by a Republican president). The supreme court vote overturning it was also 7-2, with 2 of those 7 appointed by a Democrat president.
I wouldn’t use the term misandry because they also are interested in damaging women.
“Turbowoke”, sure but we’re really just talking about mainstream American elite culture which is progressive. And young men are a particular target because they are generally the main threat to the status quo.
Basically the NY Times is precisely an agent of the status quo.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the institutional paper that lied to get us into the Iraq war isn't "turbowoke". The NYT is a propaganda outlet for the military industrial complex, not some sort of leftist activism.
I think you're misinterpreting a very specific messaging mission the neo-liberals went on. They promoted a particular brand of "feminism" to get Hillary Clinton elected. This is no longer part of their platform, and it's no longer needed as it turns out Islamaphobia, Epstein and AIPAC (and similar endeavours) were better control levers that transcend party lines. Gaza is destroyed and we're at war with Iran, mission accomplished, if not delayed a bit.
Google was not helpful to me, but what exactly is the deal being discussed? Is NYT going to allow readers to place kalshi bets on their website / app? That would be even more damaging to young men IMO.
I'm placing a bet on "at least one NYT editor caught manipulating news stories so he can win Kalshi bets within one year" if a deal like this goes through.
How will that bet be resolved concretely, will you base it on a NYT headline?
In some grim way it will be interesting to see the how this evolves. I mean, in a way betting markets are parasitic on news agencies that have a reputation for objective reporting, in the sense that they need something that can be treated as objective to evaluate their bets. How will it shake out if reporting institutions become “part of the game.” If “editor at NYT” or “knows and editor at NYT” become an advantages that can be leveraged (either for advanced outcomes or to manipulate outcomes themselves).
Maybe the betting groups will eventually need to built institutions that are known for objective/prudent reporting that can be accessed equally, haha.
I am trying to say that they cannot claim that this deal will “threaten our journalistic independence”. It is just kinda funny (and sad) that they claim that while only 32% of U.S. adults said they trust The New York Times as a source of news.
Citizen's United was the nail in the coffin for honest journalism, because it sold out to those with the largest wallets. If you truly want truth in journalism support independent journalists financially, and with your attention. Ignore corporate media.
Unfortunately, this shows how much facts and reality have been turned into nothing more than a loyalty test by both sides of our political debate.
> A partnership between The Times (for The Athletic) and Kalshi would also provide validation that their prediction market data should be taken seriously as an indicator of the future. Facts prove otherwise.
They could have objected to the partnership on any number of valid grounds, like the fact that predicting the outcome of sporting events provides no valid benefit and can only ever be gambling, or that the integration is probably going to be pretty lame and provide no benefit to the reader.
Instead, they felt compelled to make a trivially false claim, the claim that prediction markets do not accurately predict the future. It's trivial to prove that this claim is false, because if it were true, it would be very easy for anyone to make a huge amount of money on prediction markets.
It's even more telling why they made this claim, to avoid "providing validation". Not because of any harms caused by sports gambling addiction, but because it could provide a tiny piece of political ammunition to a product that has been slotted into the opposing political tribe. Reading this statement, one gets the impression that they would be completely OK with sports gambling on The Athletic, as long as it was provided by a more traditional casino-style bookie operation.
I'm guessing that anyone in the room when this statement was written who even brought up the question of the facts could be safely sidelined and ostracized by the union as being insufficiently loyal to their political position.
Christ, just say you are conservative and don't like unions and their political stances. 'Accuracy' doesn't matter at all when it comes to assessing harm, but the existence of a market signal itself can change outcomes, and then much vaunted 'accuracy' becomes a mechanism for fraud in a new and different way.
Even taking your nitpick a little bit seriously, behold:
> Retail prediction market traders pick winners 51.3% of the time yet lose money; automated traders achieve coin-flip accuracy yet earn $133 million.
The entire enterprise exists to move money from gamblers to companies. The externalities (suicide, social degradation) of this transaction is bourne by society.
> the claim that prediction markets do not accurately predict the future. It's trivial to prove that this claim is false, because if it were true, it would be very easy for anyone to make a huge amount of money on prediction markets
I'm not intimately familiar with prediction markets (I avoid gambling), but can you explain how this is the case? If the market unpredictably incorrect, then shouldn't it be difficult / impossible to predict precisely which bets will be wrong in a way that would allow you to profit from them?
Ultimately isn't it the case that all they're doing (at least from a prediction point of view) is aggregating (better or worse informed) guesses? Excepting outright corruption / insider trading of course. This might tell you a great deal about what the set of users of a given prediction market expect as an outcome for a given prediction, but it doesn't tell you anything about the future itself. Any more than the stock market (fails to) tell us to pull out money out the day before a crash.
> Instead, they felt compelled to make a trivially false claim, the claim that prediction markets do not accurately predict the future. It's trivial to prove that this claim is false, because if it were true, it would be very easy for anyone to make a huge amount of money on prediction markets.
Isn’t that what’s actually happening though? Traders are making real money from bad predictions?
“These are the Sharps actually making money on prediction markets” Odd Lots podcast (Bloomberg) 2026 https://youtu.be/MFAnQpdgkZE
In practical terms commercial prediction markets are unregulated gambling. That's where the money comes from. Stapling a vitamin C packet to your cigarette box doesn't diminish that you're selling cigarettes.
Your whole comment misses the point of the sport. It is not effective to look for the most accurate or rhetorically tested point, the goal is to rally as large a group around a point that dosent make them look like hypocrites, or materially clashes with how they present their identity in other parts of their lives.
The problem with the stock market is when there aren't enough new companies going public to soak up the spigot of all the capital that people want to invest, leading average P/E ratios to increase over time. There is too much money chasing too few earnings. When the underlying fundamentals don't match up, then all that investors are doing is speculating that someone else will be the bigger fool and buy from them at an even more unreasonable price - and that is a gamble.
Short term trading, however ...
Maybe we should just put limits on how short one can own a stock (?)
But do I want the prices to be as efficient as possible?
As a tangent, it reminds me a bit of cryptocurrency: in the earliest days the interested parties have a mix of intellectual (can it be done? How can it be done?) and some idealistic (this technology will have utility, like reducing spam or libertarianism for crypto, or giving us a more accurate and precise understanding of the world for prediction markets) values. Of course, as both are directly financial, the third value is that one stands to get rich off of the technology. This third value might be adequately communally suppressed in the beginning, but the force of money gradually makes this third value the only one that matters, and both technologies become net-negatives on humanity.
Open the watchduty app and start looking into how many fires are currently arson suspected and how this is the largest national wildfire year we've ever had.
The Dick and Cleetus methheads doing this stuff aren't the brightest and most well informed tech risk takers out there. Most of them will get caught and never get a dime, who the hell knows how why else they're causing fires, the FBI isn't investigating anyone.
GP is in favor of unions and thinks they perform beneficial public services. They don't.
– Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, describing how he stopped using sarcasm in his essays because it provokes hostility. He goes on describe the ironic person as a "pest to society."
They don't provide beneficial public services. The beneficial public service is squeezing the most you can out of every employee, which unions unjustly resist. Every employee should be isolated to the greatest extent possible, it's what's best for the market.
What's wrong with sports gambling? No one's forcing anyone to play, and it's a highly lucrative business with lots of customers.
Unions, on the other hand, involuntarily infringe on the freedoms of business owners to wield their economic power for their own benefit as they see fit.
Modern gambling isn't you talking to a bookie and putting down $100 on your favorite team. That should still be legal. Phone apps which learn your behavior, your favorite teams, the offers you are likely to accept, the time of day that you're most likely to make a bet, etc etc and use that to barrage you with notifications, "free" plays, high paying parlays with horrible odds, should not be.
Society bears the downsides of gambling and gambling addiction, while the casinos gather all of the upside.
Finally... https://www.thalamos.co.uk/resources/gambling-addiction-rela...
> NHS gambling clinics have experienced a rise of 130% in referrals in a year, leading to a large increase in the number of support locations.
Seems like the UK is also experiencing a large increase in problems from modern gambling systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gambling_in_the_Uni...
But i think one of the prediction markets more important uses is to enable insider trading for the current administration.
Sounds like the enlightened citizens of the UK aren't either?
> Health service figures show that from April to September 2024, 1,914 people were treated at NHS gambling clinics. This compares to the previous financial year when a total of 1,389 patients were cared for. In 2022-23 this number was 1,013, and in 2020-21 it was 775 patients.
I get that you're probably trying to make a point that it's bad for everyone in general, but the US is on a completely different level of societal corruption from all of this.
Yeah, it's just like being able to take an insurance policy on other people's lives. It's a wonderful idea for all of 15 minutes until people start getting murdered.
> bare minimum of regulation
No amount of regulation will solve the issue when what you can take insurance on is not regulated.
Prediction markets are to insurance the same as crypto is to banking: a speedrun of all the frauds that happened in the past until the perpetrators are sent to jail or regulated so heavily that they are virtually identical to what they were supposed to disrupt.
> found a pattern of [Polymarket] sharing false and misleading information
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/technology/polymarket-soc...
They don't have much to say about Kalshi other than "unlike real mainstream journalism, there’s no accountability". Which isn't saying much, because nobody is claiming prediction markets are a type of journalism.
Also -- hedging is generally not done based on material non-public information, but rather to guard against known risks. Joe the farmer sells a bunch of wheat futures when he plants his wheat, not because he thinks the price will go down, but rather because if it does he goes bankrupt and he'd prefer to accept a known rate-of-return now.
[0] https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-post/2024/01/insider-de...
If you make a hedging trade while having material knowledge that you withhold from the counterparty… well, that sounds like it could be edging towards fraud. Like taking out life insurance while hiding a medical condition.
But sure, it’s not against the law to do business with a sucker, so there’s degrees here.
But it’s more accurate to say participants can trade on lawfully obtained material nonpublic information absent some independent duty not to use it, which is much narrower than saying insider trading is generally legal.
Not that this excuses some of the absurd stuff that goes on on the online betting platforms...
The question answers itself.
Answered your own question.
https://news.kalshi.com/p/kalshi-cnn-prediction-market-partn...
Trump Jr. just pumped 300 million into Polymarket and also has a stake in Kalshi so, i'm not sure who thinks the DOJ will really do anything. this is fentanyl on the phone but there will have to be a few examples like some low-levels House members or state senators alongside sports casualites
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/hairdryer-or-l...
On another note, I had no idea the athletic was owned by NY Times.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/17/israel-...
In 2018, the US Supreme Court said the federal law preventing it was illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...
It was banned by the federal government in 1992 by an act of Congress (with bipartisan consensus and signed into law by a Republican president). The supreme court vote overturning it was also 7-2, with 2 of those 7 appointed by a Democrat president.
“Turbowoke”, sure but we’re really just talking about mainstream American elite culture which is progressive. And young men are a particular target because they are generally the main threat to the status quo.
Basically the NY Times is precisely an agent of the status quo.
sorry, but some of you are really deranged if you seriously expect the NYT to run "men should die"
In some grim way it will be interesting to see the how this evolves. I mean, in a way betting markets are parasitic on news agencies that have a reputation for objective reporting, in the sense that they need something that can be treated as objective to evaluate their bets. How will it shake out if reporting institutions become “part of the game.” If “editor at NYT” or “knows and editor at NYT” become an advantages that can be leveraged (either for advanced outcomes or to manipulate outcomes themselves).
Maybe the betting groups will eventually need to built institutions that are known for objective/prudent reporting that can be accessed equally, haha.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/feature/news-media-tr...
> A partnership between The Times (for The Athletic) and Kalshi would also provide validation that their prediction market data should be taken seriously as an indicator of the future. Facts prove otherwise.
They could have objected to the partnership on any number of valid grounds, like the fact that predicting the outcome of sporting events provides no valid benefit and can only ever be gambling, or that the integration is probably going to be pretty lame and provide no benefit to the reader.
Instead, they felt compelled to make a trivially false claim, the claim that prediction markets do not accurately predict the future. It's trivial to prove that this claim is false, because if it were true, it would be very easy for anyone to make a huge amount of money on prediction markets.
It's even more telling why they made this claim, to avoid "providing validation". Not because of any harms caused by sports gambling addiction, but because it could provide a tiny piece of political ammunition to a product that has been slotted into the opposing political tribe. Reading this statement, one gets the impression that they would be completely OK with sports gambling on The Athletic, as long as it was provided by a more traditional casino-style bookie operation.
I'm guessing that anyone in the room when this statement was written who even brought up the question of the facts could be safely sidelined and ostracized by the union as being insufficiently loyal to their political position.
Even taking your nitpick a little bit seriously, behold:
> Retail prediction market traders pick winners 51.3% of the time yet lose money; automated traders achieve coin-flip accuracy yet earn $133 million.
The entire enterprise exists to move money from gamblers to companies. The externalities (suicide, social degradation) of this transaction is bourne by society.
I'm not intimately familiar with prediction markets (I avoid gambling), but can you explain how this is the case? If the market unpredictably incorrect, then shouldn't it be difficult / impossible to predict precisely which bets will be wrong in a way that would allow you to profit from them?
Ultimately isn't it the case that all they're doing (at least from a prediction point of view) is aggregating (better or worse informed) guesses? Excepting outright corruption / insider trading of course. This might tell you a great deal about what the set of users of a given prediction market expect as an outcome for a given prediction, but it doesn't tell you anything about the future itself. Any more than the stock market (fails to) tell us to pull out money out the day before a crash.
Isn’t that what’s actually happening though? Traders are making real money from bad predictions?
“These are the Sharps actually making money on prediction markets” Odd Lots podcast (Bloomberg) 2026 https://youtu.be/MFAnQpdgkZE
Your whole comment misses the point of the sport. It is not effective to look for the most accurate or rhetorically tested point, the goal is to rally as large a group around a point that dosent make them look like hypocrites, or materially clashes with how they present their identity in other parts of their lives.
This point being mealy mouthed is by design.