Prediction Markets - a new kind of gambling that isn't called gambling

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it's becoming huge

from the article:

"Ask Logan Sudeith how many bets he places in a week and he'll laugh. It's a comical line of questioning for the 25-year-old former financial risk analyst, who estimates he clocks about 100 hours a week on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket. After a while, understandably, some of the bets blur together. What are his net profits, though? That's a number he's got at the ready.

"Last month, I made $100,000," said Sudeith, who does most of his trading from his laptop while bed-lounging in his Atlanta apartment. He's executing so many orders on the sites, he says, that he has no time to cook. So he DoorDashes every meal.

My last salary was $75,000 a year, so I left my job to trade full time," he said

Some of his biggest hauls in recent months include lucrative stakes on Time Magazine's person of the year ($40,236), the most-searched person on Google last year ($11,083) and a wager on the New York City mayoral race ($7,448). And of course, a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there on questions like, how many times will a sports announcer say "air ball"? And will President Trump use the phrase "drill baby drill" at an upcoming press conference? (Traders had $500,000 on the line on this market.)"


https://www.npr.org/2026/01/17/nx-s1...slang-glossary

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Quote: lilredrooster

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Some of his biggest hauls in recent months include lucrative stakes on Time Magazine's person of the year ($40,236)
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Good thing I didn't know about this - I would have bet-er, "invested" heavily on Pope Leo XIV, and probably doubled down on Ohtani (my "B choice," had Toronto won the World Series, was A'ja Wilson) being SI's Sportsperson of the Year.

Also, the President of the NCAA is requesting that these companies stop taking money on predicting the equivalent of "prop bets".

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I wanted in this post to compare the vig of sportsbooks to the vig of Prediction Markets

but the structure of fees in prediction markets is too complicated - I could not really follow the explanations I got

so, I deleted my op

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I'm pretty sure that Polymarket doesn't charge any direct fees, except on the fast 15min crypto markets where there's up to something like 1.5%.

While I don't think you can have a PolyMarket bet on a single three card poker outcome (a completely random event), I wonder if it would be possible to bet on individuals playing a three card poker tournament.

I understand that the NCAA has just made a request to some of the prediction marketplace operators that college sports be removed from their systems. This is in the wake of a game fixing scandal in college basketball that involves indictments of at least a dozen people including multiple college players at multiple schools.

Quote: gordonm888

I understand that the NCAA has just made a request to some of the prediction marketplace operators that college sports be removed from their systems. This is in the wake of a game fixing scandal in college basketball that involves indictments of at least a dozen people including multiple college players at multiple schools.
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I ‘think’ that these scandals involved ‘regular’ sportsbooks and not ‘prediction markets’. Two of the criminals played for UB. (Buffalo). In NY, you cannot place a bet on a college athlete’s points, rebounds, etc…. These brilliant lawmakers must have been unaware that there are devices that allowed these criminals to somehow communicate with cohorts in other states! Who could have foreseen that?

I think that prohibition is frankly stupid. These athletes are now for all intents and purposes professional. Making money through NIL deals instead of a salary. Enforce the laws when someone is caught fixing a game for illegal profit. But end the sham that implies these college athletes are different from the pros.

Quote: SOOPOO

Quote: gordonm888

I understand that the NCAA has just made a request to some of the prediction marketplace operators that college sports be removed from their systems. This is in the wake of a game fixing scandal in college basketball that involves indictments of at least a dozen people including multiple college players at multiple schools.
link to original post

I ‘think’ that these scandals involved ‘regular’ sportsbooks and not ‘prediction markets’. Two of the criminals played for UB. (Buffalo). In NY, you cannot place a bet on a college athlete’s points, rebounds, etc…. These brilliant lawmakers must have been unaware that there are devices that allowed these criminals to somehow communicate with cohorts in other states! Who could have foreseen that?

I think that prohibition is frankly stupid. These athletes are now for all intents and purposes professional. Making money through NIL deals instead of a salary. Enforce the laws when someone is caught fixing a game for illegal profit. But end the sham that implies these college athletes are different from the pros.
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Here's a direct quote from the NCAA president, from the link I posted above:

Quote:

Prop market restrictions — I’ve advocated for the elimination of college sport prop betting markets due to the negative impact they have on student-athletes and the integrity of competition. At my urging, the majority of states now have restrictions on these markets for college contests. While it’s unclear if there are any college prop prediction markets, these offerings already exist for professional sports, and it’s only a matter of time before operators seek to offer them on college sports.

While he is probably including direct prop bets with sports books in the statement, he is clearly (also) referring to prop bet markets, which are legal in some, if not all, states that do not have sportsbooks (e.g. California).

Thanks, TDG. But my point is that preventing ME from betting on my Alma Mater, Columbia, because I live in NY State is just stupid. A regular Joe like me just won’t put in the effort to get an account in another state, while anyone with nefarious motives will do so EASILY. And the ban on specific prop type bets (player name) while allowing all the other bets (over/under, first half pointspread, first basket
type, etc..) is just fooling yourself into thinking you have ‘protected’ the game.

Quote: lilredrooster

I wanted in this post to compare the vig of sportsbooks to the vig of Prediction Markets
link to original post

So just looking at a singular example (since I was looking at it anyways...):

Polymarket: 100$ on the Rams right now stands to pay 238.10$, and on the Seahawks, 170.07$.
Best payouts, according to VegasInsider: 100$ on the Rams right now stands to pay 235.00$, and on the Seahawks, 167.57$.

Quote: SOOPOO

Thanks, TDG. But my point is that preventing ME from betting on my Alma Mater, Columbia, because I live in NY State is just stupid. A regular Joe like me just won’t put in the effort to get an account in another state, while anyone with nefarious motives will do so EASILY. And the ban on specific prop type bets (player name) while allowing all the other bets (over/under, first half pointspread, first basket type, etc..) is just fooling yourself into thinking you have ‘protected’ the game.
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In a separate letter to state gaming commissions, the NCAA President also singled out "first half unders." I am surprised he didn't go after point spreads, as that was what led to the Arizona State scandal.
The schools still want "some" protection; this is why 2/3 of the Division I schools voted to stop an NCAA plan to get rid of the ban on college athletes betting on most pro sports or even being in fantasy sports leagues.

I remember when the "nobody can bet on college sports where a team from this state is involved" law applied in Nevada, and this extended to, "Nobody can make a futures bet on who will win the NCAA men's basketball championship before the bracket is announced," although they got around this by allowing bets on "which non-Nevada team would advance the farthest." You can imagine the problems when UNLV made it as far as the championship game.