If two lawmakers on Capitol Hill get their way, making prediction market bets on the Oscars or the Super Bowl halftime show would be illegal.
“If you bet on who’s performing at the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and lose your money to someone who controlled the answer, you’re getting ripped off,” said Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas.
“Wouldn’t the government protect consumers from markets that were transparently rigged?” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “The people who benefit in these markets are always the powerful.”
Murphy and Casar introduced a bill on Tuesday that would ban a slew of prediction markets currently offered by platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.
Dubbed the Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act, the bill would ban prediction market trading on the following:
- terrorism, assassination, and war;
- non-financial government actions in general;
- events where individuals know or can control the outcome.
At a press conference on Tuesday, both Murphy and Casar largely focused on what they described as the perils of allowing prediction market trading on government actions, including the war in Iran.
“It is frankly stunning to people that it is legal, that it is allowed, for these prediction markets to allow for bets to be made on such consequential questions like war and peace,” Murphy said.
Yet trading on events like awards shows and other cultural events has only grown in popularity. According to Kalshi, traders bet more than $105 million on the Oscars this year, up from roughly $30 million last year.
Despite that growing popularity, both lawmakers told Business Insider that they weren’t concerned about ending up on the wrong side of public opinion, given their belief that those markets are susceptible to corruption and rigging.
“When people get on their phone and see these prediction markets, they expect that there are rules to make sure the game isn’t rigged against them,” Casar said. “I think that voters would clearly stand with us, saying we want to make sure that you aren’t betting on a rigged poker game.”
As prediction markets have come under greater scrutiny, Kalshi has emphasized that its rules forbid insider trading, and the company recently said it took action against a MrBeast video editor for insider trading.
Polymarket has generally taken a more lax approach, and because it’s an international platform that hasn’t yet fully rolled out its US markets, American regulations don’t always apply.
Murphy and Casar’s bill aims to change that, including by amending existing laws to block payments to offshore prediction market platforms and imposing criminal penalties on people who promote them domestically.
Here’s the full text of the “BETS OFF Act”:
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