With on-line betting on the rise within the US and the rise of entertainment-focused prediction markets, is the identification of playing evolving?
The environment of playing is altering quickly as extra improvements enter the area. Prediction markets are encroaching on the area of conventional playing firms, with market leaders like Kalshi partnering with main manufacturers like CNN to determine a foothold within the conventional media area.
CNN companions with Kalshi to combine prediction markets into its international newsroom.
The primary main information community to embrace Kalshi prediction markets.
A brand new period of media is right here. pic.twitter.com/uXLlWVLjQs
— Kalshi (@Kalshi) December 3, 2025
The rising prevalence of prediction markets signifies that cultural or entertainment-based contracts have gotten ever extra synonymous with betting. A fast look over Kalshi’s bets, for instance, exhibits some you’d anticipate from conventional sportsbooks, but additionally some extra uncommon choices, reminiscent of “What’s going to Carmelo Anthony say throughout The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon?”, or “‘Avatar: Fireplace And Ash’ Rotten Tomatoes rating?”
“My purchasers don’t see themselves as gamblers anymore. They’re ‘engaged followers’ utilizing apps that appear like social media.” – Ava Chavez, Mission Prep Healthcare Adolescent Providers Vice President
What’s extra, conventional playing manufacturers are chasing down individuals’s consideration spans with increasingly more leisure or game-driven approaches. Microbets throughout reside sports activities occasions and same-game parlays grow to be quickfire, low-cost bets which might be seen extra as a part of the enjoyable of watching reside sports activities than taking a threat on a guess.
“The playing business is reframing itself into one thing that doesn’t really feel like playing in any respect, and that’s precisely what worries me,” mentioned Aja Chavez, Vice President of Adolescent Providers at Mission Prep Healthcare, a teen residential well being care middle, whereas chatting with ReadWrite. “My purchasers don’t see themselves as gamblers anymore. They’re ‘engaged followers’ utilizing apps that appear like social media.
“The business has efficiently rebranded betting as leisure, and it’s working. Individuals spend hours on these platforms with out recognizing it as playing as a result of it looks like simply one other a part of watching sports activities. After I ask them about it, many genuinely don’t join their every day app use with what their dad and mom did on the bookies.”
This isn’t essentially one thing wholly new, after all. Casinos, maybe probably the most conventional types of betting, has all the time leaned into the glitz and glamor of the spectacle.
What’s new, nonetheless, is how prevalent this entertainment-meets-gambling environment is when it may be funnelled out to everybody by way of gaming apps and on-line slots video games.
Playing is turning into more and more woven into locations usually reserved for leisure. You could find playing odds and prediction markets seamlessly on social media platforms like X, exposing extra individuals to betting-style companies from new demographics.
A brand new sort of bettor
Because the traces blur between leisure and playing, it brings new individuals into the world of betting. Whereas that’s not inherently a nasty factor, the shortage of correct consciousness about drawback habits can depart them uncovered to dangers they’re unused to dealing with.
Certainly, David Weisselberger, founding accomplice of Erase The Case, a legislation agency devoted to helping people in resolving their legal historical past, has seen a rising variety of first-time offenders being charged with petty theft or embezzlement. Every offense tends to be for lower than $1,000 and was sparked by makes an attempt to cowl up or fund weekend ‘enjoyable’ betting losses, typically by means of misappropriating firm funds or small-scale fraudulent acts.
“The standard threat evaluation fashions utilized by regulators don’t seize this demographic of customers as a result of they don’t gamble steadily sufficient or with the desperation of a standard playing addict,” Weisselberger defined to ReadWrite. “Nevertheless, they proceed to assist their households and maintain down full-time employment till they get arrested.”
Though on a small scale that tends to slide underneath the radar, these are extra early indicators of doubtlessly dangerous habits that would get missed.
“Prop Bets and In-Recreation Micro-Wagers create a psychological framework that causes customers to see their betting actions as a type of media consumption and never as high-stakes wagering,” added Weisselberger. “When a person locations ten $50 prop bets on whether or not a quarterback’s passes can be accomplished, he/she views the exercise as paying a premium for an enhanced viewing expertise. It creates a decrease barrier to entry for individuals who could by no means stroll right into a on line casino as a result of they don’t understand themselves as gamblers.”
Change is required
Whereas that is all properly and good for playing firms, it opens up new and doubtlessly worrying questions on gambling-related hurt discount.
“When it comes to how we must always measure threat and hurt, our conventional methods had been constructed for a special period,” defined Chavez. “We search for issues like chasing losses, mendacity about cash, or determined monetary conditions. These nonetheless matter, however they miss one thing essential about trendy betting.
“What I’m seeing now could be a brand new sample. Persons are shedding cash progressively by means of fixed, small bets, they usually’re spending monumental quantities of time on these platforms. By the point these traditional warning indicators seem, the psychological hooks are already deep.”
Within the US, a number of the indicators that playing operators have to hold a watch out for as a part of social duty calls for embody escalating guess sizes, chasing losses, elevated deposits, extended play, and indicators of economic points like borrowing cash.
Nevertheless, as Chavez factors out, micro bets may not lead to these early indicators in the identical manner, however the identical unhealthy and damaging behaviors might nonetheless be taking root, particularly amongst susceptible individuals.
“I consider we have to begin on the lookout for completely different purple flags,” Chavez mentioned. “We have to ask questions on how a lot of somebody’s time and mindspace the platform consumes, whether or not betting has grow to be woven into their identification as a fan, and simply how normalized it’s grow to be of their every day life. That’s the place the hurt begins now.”
Playing hasn’t simply modified type – it seems to have modified which means.
Featured picture: Unsplash
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