Good call out. I hadn't considered this. Would be interesting to see net.

I was just coming to say the prediction markets are probably way, way worse for society; sports or otherwise. For one thing, they'll be around a trillion dollar market in a few years[1]. How is that in any way a good thing? For another, every bettor on a prediction market is incentivized to use insider information at best, or even to influence the outcome at worst. This is a low point of civilization.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/14/prediction-markets-will-grow...

Wagering 10% of your household income is not shocking?? What would it take to shock you? That is an astounding amount.

Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. I've watched gambling destroy more than one family member's lives.

To put this number in context: estimate 1/3 of income for rent, so this is 1/3 of their rent?! Translating that to my own rent is an amount that would immediately lead me to quit forever.

Really? That's an incredible number to me. 10% of all household spending goes to gambling?! 31,000 dollars per player *per year*? The mind boggles.

It also could be inflated due to winnings being put back into another bet. A single dollar could be accounted for multiple times if used in multiple bets.

Not that I am saying that this number is ok, gambling is a net negative on any society.

Average is meaningless for anything that isn’t a normal distribution. The median spend per account is probably like $100.

The gross amount doesn't tell you how much money is being lost to gambling. I'm not going to soften that wording, it really is lost, but such a shocking gross amount means the average loss is in the thousands per year. Gambling is also the archetypal whale hunt. Your best customers are harmed most by your product.

There's nothing else that delivers that level of harm directly to a device in your pocket.

I’ve traded over a million dollars of equity volume this year but my brokerage account has less than $50,000 in it. You can wager the same dollar more than once.

It's a long tail. The vast majority make $20 parlay wagers here and there and they're the real cash cow. And then there are the degens that make $2,000, or $5,000 wagers on everything because otherwise "what's the point?".

Short of outright banning (which I would favor), we can at least make mobile wagers capped at say $100 and the same account can't wager more that $500 within a 24 hour period.

That would allow people to have their fun but seriously limit the blast radius when they inevitably lose big repeatedly.