Losing Control Of The Narrative
New polling indicates public support of legal sports betting is dwindling.
The Bulletin Board
THE LEDE: Polls show increasing skepticism of legal sports betting’s benefits.
NEWS: The NCAA has concerns about prediction markets.
VIEWS: We don’t offer parlays; they’re “combos.”
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: What happens when…
STRAY THOUGHTS: Staying power.
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The Lede: Support of Legal Sports Betting Is Slipping
The legal sports betting hangover STTP has warned of has arrived, as polling continues to indicate the public is increasingly fed up with constant exposure to betting and sports integrity scandals.
As I noted in February 2024, and again in April 2024 (excerpt below), the narrative is slipping away:
“To say the industry has lost the plot is an understatement. But I’m not surprised. Unless it’s trying to expand gambling in a new market, the industry is rarely proactive. With most things, it’s reactionary and tends only to interact when absolutely necessary – when the train has already gone off the rails.
“When there is negative press, the industry buries its head in the sand or pushes back with cries of being mischaracterized, falsely accused, or conflated with offshore bookies. And any communication is always delivered in corporate PR speak.
“But as I’ve previously said, arguing back and forth is a road to nowhere.
“Both sides have their own data and reports to point to, and I’ve yet to come across someone who has gone from anti-gambling to pro-legalization.
“The industry needs to pick its battles and go on the offensive, admit (gasp!) that gambling does cause social harm, and regain control of the narrative because, at the moment, it’s primarily seen as a self-serving entity with one thing on its mind: money.”
So what are the polls saying? As I noted in October, a Pew Research Study showed waning support for legal sports betting, with a growing percentage of respondents viewing legal sports betting as bad for society and sports:
A more recent poll from the Washington Post and University of Maryland that used the same 2022 baseline date found similar public sentiments. However, unlike the Pew poll, the WaPo-UMD poll shows a decline in support, with the neutral cohort more constant:
And as I noted in October, these are not outliers:
“And this isn’t a one-off. As the Boston Globe reported, ‘The new UMass survey found a significant increase in the share of regular gamblers who think legal betting is now too widely available in the state, and a corresponding drop in the share who think all gambling should be legal.’”
And as Gambling Harm has noted:
“An early 2025 survey from Sacred Heart University found that only 36.9% of Americans believe sports gambling has a more positive than negative effect on society. Approximately 48.4% think the impact is more negative.
“A Morning Consult survey published in March 2025 found that 33% of U.S. adults said that, in general, they believe legal sports betting is a “good thing” for the country as a whole, while 31% said it was a bad thing. The remaining respondents were unsure.”
STTP Thoughts: All of this is occurring while prediction markets are now offering sports to anyone 18+ in all 50 states, which is unlikely to help quell concerns over access, wall-to-wall advertisements, and integrity concerns. As Jack Nicholson said in Batman, “Wait till they get a load of me.” More on this in the Stray Thoughts section below.
News: NCAA Joins Anti-Prediction Market Chorus
The NCAA is the latest organization to weigh in on prediction markets, with NCAA President Charlie Baker calling them the next major flashpoint in the gambling world, in a recent interview (which also has many comments about sports betting and prop bets).
“Prediction markets are not regulated at all. And so, ya know, California, which currently doesn’t permit sports betting, the prediction markets could have an absolute ball taking that space over.
“You see DraftKings and FanDuel dropping out of the American Gaming Association… I’d be willing to conclude that a big part of their reasoning is they’re going to get into the prediction market space. They can’t afford to let those folks dominate all that green space they can’t currently access.
“It just says this whole thing is going to get worse unless somebody does something about it. And solving it at the federal level is going to be really challenging because it’s still new and not fully formed. So, I mean, you’re basically talking about no rules, no oversight, no nothing. And that just feels catastrophic to me. Not just for us, but for everybody.”
Three of the four major sports leagues are also on the record on prediction markets.
As previously reported, the NHL signed a deal with Kalshi, which Commissioner Gary Bettman later called “protective,” providing the league with some leverage. As Dustin Gouker recently noted, the league is either okay with player props on Kalshi, or (left unsaid) was ignored if the markets were asked to be taken down.
In a letter from August, obtained by Front Office Sports, MLB and the MLBPA “instructed players against ‘participating in prediction markets to risk money on any outcome related to baseball games or events,’ framing involvement as a violation of its longstanding sports betting policies.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said of prediction markets: “[The NFL] likes to be first in the market in a lot of things, but in a lot of things, we’re willing to say, ‘We’re going to let things play out. We’re going to decide, is this something we want to do?’”
And as reported in The Closing Line, in written testimony submitted to the House Committee on Agriculture, which held a “stakeholder perspectives” session last week, Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president for communications, public affairs & policy, player health & safety wrote:
“As Commissioner Goodell recently discussed at a public forum, the league has no plans to participate in prediction markets due to several outstanding legal, regulatory, and commercial concerns on how these markets operate and the possible impact on the integrity of sporting events.
“We are particularly troubled that several sports-related futures contracts have been launched nationwide, including in jurisdictions where sports betting has not been legalized. These contracts fall outside the purview of state regulatory authorities and the safeguards they impose upon the industry, including information-sharing requirements, integrity monitoring, prohibitions on easily manipulated markets, official league data requirements, know-your-customer protocols, and problem gambling resources. For example, just this past weekend, one prediction market exchange was accepting bets on whether or not “concussion protocol,” “late hit,” or “roughing the passer” would be mentioned during the broadcast. Congress and the CFTC should prohibit these and other types of objectionable bets among the many consumer and integrity protective measures needed before sports-related events contracts are legalized.
“The amounts potentially wagered through unregulated gaming contracts markets could significantly exceed those in regulated sports betting markets, creating substantially greater risks to contest integrity… In each of these state-regulated markets, regulators and state legislators closely monitor betting activity and, with input from professional sports leagues, can determine which bets and wager levels are acceptable. Those guardrails do not exist in prediction markets.”
Of note, the NFL is not saying it is opposed to prediction markets, rather it wants the same protocols and policies that exist in state-level sports betting put in place:
“We would welcome the opportunity to work with the House Agriculture Committee and the CFTC to understand whether the game integrity safeguards that exist in regulated sports betting markets can be effectively implemented on self-regulated exchanges under the regulatory purview of the CFTC. Until such time that professional sports leagues and fans can be certain that effective game integrity and consumer protection measures can be enforced, sports-related events contracts should not be approved by the CFTC, and Congress should consider clarifying the definition of “gaming” contracts in the prohibited categories of the Commodity Exchange Act.”
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Views: Kalshi’s “Combos” Spark Outrage and Ridicule
Kalshi is now offering “combos” which is a new euphemism for parlays.
Obviously, Kalshi is trying to avoid giving its opponents more ammunition (in public and in courts), but the company is using “parlay” in its app and in marketing, continuing its strategy of calling its product one thing when it’s in front of the consumer and another in court.
There is also some debate around who is filling these orders.
As one X user asked in a thread:
“Doesn’t this just mean that your internal market maker is taking the parlay flow?” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour replied, “No.”
“So who’s the immediate provider of liquidity against complicated parlays? Appreciate the response.”
A Kalshi employee responded: “Anyone can actually reply with quotes in real time using our API… Of course it’s tricky to price these products, but we’ve actually seen a lot of our members pick it up!” And in a subsequent tweet: “There are actually dozens of different users competing to offer the best price. A typical request gets 6 or more quotes in response. There’s no market making program for this product/benefits for anyone on the other side.”
STTP Thoughts: This appears to be a case of Kalshi lumping in its market makers with regular users (retail traders), which is technically correct in the “corporations are people” sense (market makers are in fact, “users”). However, that argument is unlikely to play well in the court of public opinion, especially if the “dozens” competing on complex parlays turn out to be mostly pros and institutional market makers rather than average members.
Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
I’ve been making this point publicly (in the newsletter and on my podcast) and privately for several months:
STTP Thoughts: The prediction market “come to Jesus” moment is likely to begin in September-October, when everyone starts focusing on the midterm election forecasts and the cries of “Fake News!” or “Thumb-on-the-scale!” ring out from whichever side is expected to lose.
Stray Thoughts
My social media feed is filled with prediction market cheerleaders and player haters (one of my favorite Chappelle’s Show skits). The cheerleaders are so focused on the now, they don’t realize that even if prediction markets do "take over,” there will be a backlash. It’s inevitable. The prediction markets of today will not be the prediction markets of tomorrow.
They may think they outsmarted the system to avoid “gambling” but the negative consequences of their product will be exactly like gambling and they will face the same scrutiny.
Sportsbooks claim they offer entertainment. Prediction markets claim economic utility. But both cause social harms, and that will always lead to public backlash and lawmakers and regulators (state or federal) stepping in.
Basically, the idea that Kalshi and Polymarket will somehow avoid the traps and pitfalls that have ensnared every other form of gambling that has risen to prominence is a fantasy.
There’s nothing unique here except the hype; the product fosters the same addictive behaviors and has more potential for market manipulation. That’s not going to fly just because the companies in the space claim it’s not gambling (for legal reasons).
Assuming they survive the legal challenges, my prediction is this: Tomorrow’s prediction markets will look a lot more like heavily monitored gambling industry than the freewheeling platforms of today.