Sports Betting vs. Predicting Market
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Calling it "sports betting"? It's illegal in many states.
Calling it a "prediction market"? It's legal -- regulated federally and out of the reach of state laws.How does an operator or a "prediction market" distinguishes its practice from "sports betting"? It claims that in "sports betting" the bookmaker keeps the money when bettors lose their bets, where as a "prediction market" maker facilitates trading of futures contracts tied to sporting outcomes between users and take a cut of the proceeds as "service fee."
Do you buy this?
Maybe expect more "sport betting" operations to restructure themselves into "predictive markets."
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Prediction markets are federally regulated so states can’t outlaw them. They are open to 18 year olds, most sports books require 21. Betting is common among young men so they get used to using prediction markets long before they’re eligible for sports book apps.
I don’t know if they’ve caught up to betting apps but they have innate advantages.
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Wow those are some big numbers.
I started a thread about prediction markets a few days ago. https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-room.club/topic/39163/prediction-markets
They are really taking off, and I think will be very commonplace soon since they democratize (or whatever the word would be) public sentiment. Almost like real-time polls everywhere for everything.
I dabbled with a sports betting app last year but found it too addicting so I deleted it. I don't think I net won anything.
After listening to a podcast I did download Kalshi and made a few bets (like $100 that Vance will be the nominee) and they do make sports betting much simpler. "Yes or no" about whether something will happen along with the % chance (based on what everyone is picking) to determine how much you win. For example, during the superbowl I had the seahawks in a few small bets that paid out early so at half time the score was I think 9-0 or 12-0 and it asked if I thought the "over" (total points) for the game would be 31.5 so I said yes and made like 4x on that money. So I'm sitting with a nice balance in Kalshi now but don't plan to use it unless there are current events where we (like here in TNCR) like to predict what will happen and I'll do that from time to time.
There is a bet that SpaceX will dock two rockets together in space before 2028 which I very much doubt but the markets say it's more likely yes than no, so maybe there's information there I'm not aware of.
It is very easy to insider game this thing right now btw... if you're at SpaceX for example and know of specific plans, you could make a lot of money betting on rocket timing predictions.
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Polymarket has $2,400,000 bet on will Jesus Christ return before 2027. Who has the insider trading on this one? Someone in the Vatican?
