Illinois moves to block insider betting by state employees

Hours before Timothée Chalamet was officially named Best Actor at this year’s Golden Globes, the audience already knew he was going to win, because live odds from prediction market Polymarket displayed on screen told them so.

The platform got 26 out of 28 categories right that night.

The industry is expanding rapidly. Polymarket has partnered with major sports leagues, Dow Jones, and Substack.

Meanwhile, its rival Kalshi secured an exclusive deal to provide live betting odds for CNBC and has expanded its presence on CNN.

In recent weeks, the pace has quickened.

With the signing of a sponsored integration with Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Weather, and Fox One in early April, Kalshi now has a presence on all of the major cable news networks.

LaLiga North America became the first major European football league to name a prediction market operator as an official regional partner in the United States and Canada when Polymarket announced a multi-year exclusive partnership with the league a few days later.

These platforms’ creators have discovered a cunning legal loophole.

By labelling bets as “event contracts” and calling themselves “financial exchanges,” these platforms use a legal loophole to bypass gambling taxes and age limits.

This shift has fueled massive growth, allowing users to wager on anything from global shipping conflicts to the discovery of aliens.

Critics raise concerns about prediction markets

The rapid spread of these platforms has drawn criticism from several corners.

Olivier Toubia, a business professor at Columbia University’s Columbia Business School, has raised concerns about what happens when betting odds become the main source of public information.

He warned that “the prediction becomes the leading carrier of the truth,” and that markets can end up shaping the very events people are betting on.

TV host John Oliver took a sharper tone on his show Last Week Tonight, going after what he called the “dark” side of profiting from war or unfolding disasters.

He also took aim at news organizations, accusing them of helping clean up the image of these companies by treating their odds as legitimate news.

Illinois moves to block insider betting by state employees

Those concerns have now reached the state government.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed an executive order this week banning state employees from using private government information to place bets on prediction markets.

The order covers all state officers and employees and bars them from using “nonpublic information obtained through one’s official position” to participate in these markets, whether or not they actually make money from it.

Sharing that kind of information with others to help them bet is also prohibited.

Pritzker tied the move to broader concerns about conflicts of interest in public office.

“While the Trump Administration continues to be riddled with stories of appointees looking to make a profit, Illinois is stepping up to ensure those who are serving the public not their own personal financial gain,” he said.

The order came after reports of suspicious activity on Polymarket.

Certain accounts made strategic wagers ahead of a potential U.S.-Iran truce and won hundreds of thousands of dollars, as Cryptopolitan revealed earlier this year.

This raised concerns about whether the gamble was made by someone with inside government knowledge.

For media and entertainment companies, the appeal of these partnerships is simpler. It is about keeping audiences engaged.

Kimberly Francella-Faver, a senior vice president at NBCUniversal, said that interactive games are an important part of what Peacock offers viewers.

Jack Rousseau, CEO of Rex Entertainment, said that if prediction markets bring in more viewers and generate buzz, they could be a useful tool for promoting movies and TV shows.

However, Toubia advised media businesses to carefully consider the broader implications.

“The brands that signed on will eventually face the consequences of turning everyday life into a betting opportunity if these partnerships end up harming people’s mental health or distorting political events,” he warned.

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