Prediction markets make America’s moral downfall a safe bet

It would have been hard for President Trump to miss the sea of banners touting sports betting when he attended Game Three of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. The Garden is festooned with ads for the Knicks’ “Official Sports Betting Partner,” Caesars Sportsbook. The entire sixth floor lobby has been renamed the Kalshi Concourse to mark a deal that made Kalshi the arena’s “Official Prediction Market Partner.“

The gambling business is familiar territory for Trump, who failed at running four of his own casino properties in the 1990s and 2000s. The Trumps also have their fingers in the booming prediction market industry: Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm 1789 Capital is a major investor in Kalshi competitor Polymarket, which didn’t dissuade Kalshi from naming Trump Jr. as a strategic adviser in January 2025. Both firms clearly see proximity to the first family as a winning bet. 

Embraced by a president who sees prediction markets as the nation’s next big industry and abetted by cash-strapped states hungry to generate additional tax revenue, our elected leaders are hard at work turning America into the world’s largest casino floor. The result is a country where every government action has a potential profit incentive, every piece of information can be monetized, and our public officials are more interested in their prediction market profit/loss ratios than in basic questions of right and wrong.

The temptation to profit from sensitive government information has already proven........

© The Hill