At the Grammy Awards this past weekend, comedian Trevor Noah cracked a joke about Polymarket. While this offhand mention was likely no more than a name drop, it shows just how mainstream prediction markets and gambling sites have become in the U.S. over the past few years.
Anyone who has spent time on social media looking at sports content over the past year has almost certainly come across a poorly disguised advertisement for Kalshi, Polymarket or any number of sports betting apps.
Since 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that a federal ban on sports betting was unconstitutional, the popularity of these apps has taken off, leaving us at the point where, as of February 2025, 22% of Americans have an account with at least one sportsbook. When looking only at men aged 18-49, the target demographic for gambling companies, the same study found that 48% had an account. Considering the industry’s rise in popularity over the past year, these numbers are almost certainly even higher now.
This is hardly an innocuous pastime for Americans, though. The figures running gambling companies are shady and prey on those with addictive tendencies. In particular, the two so-called prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, have run into significant legal challenges that have, by and large, been protected by the White House.
Under the legal definition, neither is technically gambling; rather than playing the house odds, Kalshi claims “one difference is that users are not going up against the house but instead trading contracts with other users on the opposite side of the proposition.” This definition has been repeatedly challenged for the past eight years, as both Kalshi and Polymarket have run into numerous operational issues domestically and internationally.
Under the Biden administration, Polymarket wasn’t allowed to operate in the U.S. due to stricter regulations at the time, which have been lifted since Donald Trump Jr. was named an advisor to the company in August 2025.
Polymarket has since faced insider trading allegations in January 2026, as a new account made over $400,000 on two bets relating to U.S. action in Venezuela. A mere day after these bets were placed, the U.S. abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and the anonymous account made its profit.
With these companies cozying up to the White House in a clear attempt to skirt regulatory rules, there should be more caution around using these platforms, yet their ubiquitous saturation is desensitizing people to the absurdity of being able to bet on events such as corporate intelligence leaks or the return of Jesus Christ. Despite the wide-ranging scope of possible bets on prediction markets, by far the most profitable and frequently placed are still sports bets.
Sports betting’s rapid rise in the American market isn’t surprising. It has been a contentious topic in the country for decades, and as the political climate has skewed towards deregulation, this was only a matter of time. Its effects bleed out to much more than just gamblers and fans.
American sports leagues, seeing the vast sums of money on the table, have taken to partnering with these companies, despite the risks that they pose to competition integrity. In January, MLS joined the NFL, MLB, WNBA, NBA and NHL in naming an official sports betting partner. This is despite the rapid increase in suspensions dished out to players over the past few years on account of them betting on themselves or other teams. And these are the least at-risk players; college or minor league players are considerably more likely to be tempted to place bets due to lower salaries and less scrutiny from watchdogs.
The fan problems are not limited to America, either. Both Africa and Asia have seen large-scale gambling problems; accounts such as those from Kenya and Uganda show how deceitful betting companies can be when they aren’t properly regulated or in bed with the government.
In Europe, where sports betting is more common, countries are finally enacting regulations to try to curb their high rates of compulsive and addictive gambling. Recently, the English Premier League banned betting sponsors from appearing on their team jerseys beginning next season. With Europe finally taking action to attempt to limit the influence and visibility of these companies, the U.S. appears to be headed in the opposite direction.
While all of this is true, and these companies are often predatory and sketchy entities skirting around the edges of the law, is gambling truly that harmful? Should we actually view regular gambling as a similar risk as alcohol or drug usage?
In some ways, it is. While excessive gambling itself does not pose the direct health risks of alcohol or drug usage, this means that when trying to tackle America’s addiction problems, gambling is often overlooked in favor of more visible epidemics such as fentanyl or opioids.
Perhaps more crucially, the surge in gambling is particularly problematic among poorer populations who are generally more likely to fall victim to addiction. According to research in the United Kingdom, poorer towns are ten times as likely to have physical betting shops, and twice as many online gambling accounts belong to customers from economically deprived areas. These trends are only exacerbated by growing income inequality and post-pandemic poverty rates that stabilized last year but are likely to grow again in the wake of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, leading to a population more incentivized to bet with a dwindling supply of extra money to do so. And this is just the initial boom of these platforms, with ten more years of incessant promotion and integration with every facet of popular culture, the problem will grow.
So what do we do about this? Now that the sports betting genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, it will likely never return to the pre-2018 status quo. Solutions such as self-imposed gambling bans, which are now being rolled out in Europe, and only allowing sports betting at limited locations in person, such as in Washington, might get us halfway there, but fundamentally, our mindset has to change.
If a friend were clearly struggling with alcohol or drugs, most people would try to intervene, talk to them about it, or get them help in another way, but this mindset doesn’t exist in the same way with gambling.
“That’s not to say it doesn’t exist,” as one Colorado College student stated, “It is not just an annoyance but a genuine concern to have my phone blown up by a friend who wants advice to lock in his picks, followed by constant stressed-out texts begging a team to score.”
But this concern must lead to real conversations; conversations that it feels like no one wants to have right now, despite this being the best time to do so.