“every new betting partnership makes prediction markets harder to regulate”
In just a few years, prediction markets have gone from obscure tools concentrated in the niche corners of elite policy, academia, intelligence, and analytics communities to rapidly expanding fixtures throughout American economic, political, and cultural life. Roosevelt's Shahrzad Shams maps their embedding into sports, media, and finance — three of the top five US sports leagues now have formal partnerships with prediction market platforms, a quarter of the top 20 media companies integrate their products, and sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel are blurring the line between gambling and trading. Drawing on path dependence theory, she warns that every new partnership narrows the window for meaningful regulation: the longer policymakers wait, the more calcified these arrangements become, and the harder they are to unwind.
Some technical background helpful
Platforms mentioned: Kalshi, Polymarket, FanDuel, DraftKings