I think sports betting is a lot less harmful than prediction markets. With sports betting if someone throws a game to get a pay day, for instance, the only real consequence is on the reputation of the sport. In prediction markets, people can do all sorts of awful things to make money as insiders..

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827a 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

There's a pretty decent counter-argument though: Prediction markets are just a market for users to counterparty each-other. Which means, technically, for every trade there is a winner and a loser, and both the winner and the loser are generally just normal people (or market makers). Polymarket/Kalshi just take X% on the top as a fee. Versus, with sports betting, the counterparty is the casino. Its the difference of trying to outsmart a massive casino, versus a more peer-to-peer system; the potential for ROI is (probably) higher in prediction markets.

I am still very, very anti prediction market, to be clear. But that is one reason why I would agree with a soft statement like "prediction markets are less harmful than sports betting" (in much the same way that a handgun is less harmful than a fully automatic rifle).

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_--__--__ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most available data suggests that sports betting is much worse for the people making the bets, as it better targets people with poor impulse control. Bad bets in political markets aren't causing measurable increases in bankruptcy and domestic violence rates (https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-online-sports-gambling-exp...).

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RajT88 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I live in IL, and digital slots have taken over so many spaces. Online sports betting is bad enough, but more than that is going on.

Not just bars, but restaurants. Places you might take a date for nice Italian food have little corners with digital slots. Gas stations, Taco joints, sometimes an entire business in a strip mall dedicated to digital slots.

It's insane. The only place like it I'd seen prior to a some years back was Nevada. Businesses must be making crazy money off of them to be so prolific in putting them in, and that money comes from somewhere (i.e. not likely to be casual players).

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striking 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think that article supports your claim that bad bets in political markets aren't causing measurable increases in bankruptcy and domestic violence rates. It only tells us about online sportsbetting, and it was written in 2024 before prediction markets really took off. If anything, it provides evidence weakly in favor of the argument that bad bets in political markets would negatively affect the bettors.

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cyberax 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Likely because this type of betting is still niche. Give it some time.

	▲	_--__--__ 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sports gambling a few advantages over any other subject that seem near insurmountable to me: - it has the semi-respectable veneer of something that normal people have done throughout human history - it has completely parasitized existing sports media to target new users in ways that aren't available for other topics - some variant of 'sports' is happening 24/7/365 with enough prop bet granularity to capture the full attention and disposable income of addicts. There's an ongoing controversy with a star college football quarterback who was going to MLB games to place bets on every single individual pitch. You can basically think of gambling addicts as a finite resource that these different companies are competing for. Many people get addicted to lootbox/gacha games at an early age, and even larger portion are already deep in sports gambling. The target demo for non-sports prediction markets roughly matches to people in earlier times who got into commodities futures or optimal strategies for casino games (which clearly existed but never at a scale to rival what we see with sports betting right now).

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dools 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, prediction markets are like if you could bet on arbitrary decisions a coach or manager might make. Like starting lineup or different trades of players between teams or the size of a players contract in dollars, rather than events that happen during gameplay. There are people who know the facts already but the public does not.

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superfrank 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

First, over 90% of the wagers on Polymarket and Kalshi are already on sports (quoting John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on that one). Despite the headlines, Kalshi and Polymarket are mainly just sportsbooks.

Second, while yes, some of the markets available on prediction markets can push people to do awful things, there are plenty that are harmless. I'm cherry picking to make an extreme point, but I would so much rather have someone betting on what the temperature in Los Angeles is going to be tomorrow on Kalshi than betting on who will win the little league world series on DraftKings.

I support regulation saying certain things should not be allowed to be bet on, but allowing bets on morally questionable things isn't a quality unique to prediction markets.

	▲	jeltz 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Technically they are betting exchanges. But they also probably have contracts with some of the big sportsbooks to provide liquidity too making them also kinda a sportsbook. I used to work at a betting exchange and we did have liquidity partners that made sure to increase the liquidity on our exchange.
	▲	nojito 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>Kalshi and Polymarket are mainly just sportsbooks. How? They sell contracts between two users. One side each. Completely different from a sportsbook where users are betting that the lines they set are not correct.