Google announced earlier this month that it will integrate odds from online betting platforms Kalshi Inc. and Polymarket into its Google Finance tools amid pushback from lawmakers over the evolution of modern-day gambling.
The integration of these “event contract” sites will enable users to “ask questions about future market events and harness the wisdom of the crowds,” according to a company blog post. The decision, however, comes as both Kalshi and Polymarket navigate a complex web of state and federal regulations.
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Kalshi and Polymarket maintain their platforms offer “event contracts” between private parties that should be regulated like commodities rather than traditional gambling subject to state oversight; an argument that has received pushback from government officials, NBC Chicago said. Companies like Kalshi and Polymarket should “package sports betting as events contracts” to circumvent established gaming regulations, state attorneys general claimed in a lawsuit in June.
U.S. senators including five Democrats and one Republican addressed that concern in a letter to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Acting Chair Caroline Pham September “By claiming to be federally regulated … issuers of sports event contracts can avoid myriad state [gaming] laws, including licensing and background investigations, minimum age requirements, federal anti-money laundering rules, and consumer protections such as addiction warnings and integrity monitoring,” the lawmakers wrote.
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Nearly 80% of American voters support keeping prediction market regulation at the federal level rather than under state gambling authorities, according to a poll of 1,219 people nationwide commissioned by Kalshi and conducted by Axis Research. Eighty-nine percent of respondents agreed all Americans should have the freedom and ability to choose whether or not to engage in these markets regardless of their own participation.
Among those surveyed, 75% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats supported a federal regulatory approach to prediction markets. “American voters want the freedom to choose how to invest their own money without state-level interference,” Kalshi Head of Corporate Development Sara Slane said in a LinkedIn post. “The current federal regulatory structure is best equipped to oversee this financial activity, a point underscored by Congress.”