Every Friday in our Prediction Markets Weekly column, SBC Americas peels back the curtain on some of the stories you may have missed.
We covered a lot of ground already this week, from Arizona filing the first criminal court complaint against Kalshi on Monday to the federal BETS OFF Act in Congress on Tuesday to MLB stepping up to the plate with a partnership with Polymarket and an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
As usual, though, that only scratched the surface. Here are six tidbits you may have missed.
Arizona and Nevada judges both deny Kalshi
The state court criminal filing wasn’t the only court update in Arizona involving Kalshi, as a federal judge denied the company’s motion for a temporary restraining order against Attorney General Kris Mayes. Kalshi’s motion for a preliminary injunction is still alive.
The judge also ordered Kalshi to show just cause as to why the federal court should not abstain from the case entirely in light of the state court criminal charges, which raised the stakes considerably. What happens in Arizona could serve as a roadmap for other states, particularly if the federal judge decides that it should decline to hear Kalshi’s lawsuit and instead defer to the state court case in which Kalshi is the defendant, not the plaintiff.
Meanwhile, in the comparatively old court battleground of Nevada, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected Kalshi’s emergency motion for an administrative stay pending an appeal. In essence, it upheld a previous decision that Nevada’s case against Kalshi should remain in state court and could set the stage for an imminent temporary restraining order that would force Kalshi to halt Nevada trading on sports contracts.
Argentina kicks out Polymarket
There was big news from Latin America this week as a Buenos Aires judge banned Polymarket from doing business in the country after a court complaint from the Buenos Aires city lottery.
A judge agreed with the lottery that the prediction market constituted an illegal gambling equivalent in Argentina that was being made available to residents via the Polymarket website and apps on the Apple and Google stores. The court issued directives to both tech giants to restrict access to the apps nationwide.
Argentina is the first Latin American country to restrict a prediction market platform in such a way, and this also marks the first time the tech companies giants have been ordered to remove illegal gambling apps in Argentina. Could we perhaps see more markets in Latin America, and maybe even further afield, follow suit?
FOX preparing Kalshi partnership?
Front Office Sports was first to report this week that FOX Corporation and Kalshi are in talks to partner up. The site reported that the deal would encompass FOX News and FOX Weather but would not include FOX Sports, citing sources.
Kalshi already has deals in place with leading news and media companies including CNN and CNBC, while Polymarket has agreements with Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones as well as Yahoo Finance.
Kalshi’s $1bn perfect bracket PR stunt
It was around this time last year that Kalshi ramped up its initial slate of sports event contracts for the 2025 March Madness tournaments. The company used this year’s edition to go into PR overdrive.
Kalshi announced that it will award $1bn to anyone who somehow manages to correctly predict the winner of every single game in the tournament. Players are not required to make a deposit on Kalshi in order to try their luck, although it will likely bring plenty of new users to the site. The company also recruited NBA player Devin Booker to promote the offer.
To be fair, the company is selling the offer as what it is: as close to impossible as can be. “Your odds are roughly equivalent to searching for one grain of sand from all of Earth’s beaches and deserts, and getting it right on the first try.” If, or rather when, nobody manages the feat, Kalshi will pay out $1m to the best-scoring entrant and pay $500,000 each to two education non-profits.
Prediction markets less ‘bad’ than sports betting?
An IPSOS poll cast some interesting light on the public perception of prediction markets in the U.S.
The survey, conducted in partnership with the American Institute for Boys and Men, found that around one in five respondents described themselves as familiar with prediction markets, but that only 3% (or roughly one in every 33 respondents) actually use them. A whopping 91% of those who do use prediction markets called them financially risky.
However, while more than half (52%) of respondents said they think online sports betting is “bad for society”, only 38% said the same for prediction markets. Other conclusions worth touching on included that 59% of respondents think prediction markets should be regulated like sports betting and 25% said they should be flat-out banned in the U.S.
CFTC takes first comments on prediction markets rules
Finally, within the first few days of the CFTC opening the public comment period on its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for prediction markets, the federal agency took several submissions this week.
Among those having their say were a pair of federal senators, Jack Reed and John Hickenlooper, who wrote to CFTC Chair Michael Selig to urge him to ban event contracts on things such as “whether a U.S. adversary will no longer be in office,” arguing that those are tantamount to offering trading on war-related issues.
“These contracts are so dangerous to the national security of the United States and so offensive to U.S. values that they far outweigh any legitimate risk-management purpose,” wrote the senators.
The full list of comments submitted so far can be seen here.
