I’ve been pondering a post about the gambling industry since print refugee Derek Brouwer’s insightful story was posted on February 3 — if you missed it, please go back and read it. But things have escalated tremendously, and the situation is quite a bit worse than it seemed when Brouwer, reported on all the holes in Vermont’s oversight of legalized gambling.
It almost seems quaint to list the issues Brouwer identified, but let’s have a go.
- The gambling industry is growing rapidly, up by nearly 20% in 2025 compared to its legalized debut in 2024.
- Betting on football and basketball are flat, while the growth is in relatively obscure sports. Which by their obscurity, are more prone to fixing and other abuses. And gambling on sports you know nothing about is a big flashing indicator of addictive behavior.
- “A complete picture of Vermonters’ sports betting habits is not available” because the regulatory agency “publishes very limited data.”
- Vermont collected $7.2 million in taxes from the regulated industry — but spent less than 15% of that on programs aimed at problem gambling.
That’s all plenty bad. But the prediction markets are throwing a big ol’ bomb into Vermont’s patchwork oversight regime.
I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, so this is an oversimplification that I think is basically correct. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are not technically gambling platforms. They are organized like stock markets. You don’t place a bet; you make an investment for or against a prediction.
By organizing themselves in this way, they are not subject to state laws on gambling. (At least not yet; the question is already the subject of numerous lawsuits and will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.) They are operating freely across the country. In the words of CasinoBeats, a gaming industry news site, prediction markets “do not need to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations, rules on preventing problem gambling, or any state taxes on gaming revenue.”
What’s more, they process bets — err, investments — on practically any human endeavor, not just sports. So if you think it’s a bad sign that more Vermonters are betting on table tennis or cornhole, that’s nothing compared to the uncounted, unregulated bets on the invasion of Iran or measles outbreaks or the length of a presidential press briefing.
(As of this writing, Polymarket’s home page allowed you to bet — sorry, invest — on the US/Israel/Iran/Middle East conflict, the price of bitcoin in five minutes’ time, the identity of Nepal’s next prime minister, the Panthers/Blue Jackets hockey game, the number of tweets posted by Elon Musk in a one-week span, the winner of the Eurovision song contest, today’s high temperature in London or Miami, whether the U.S. will confirm the existence of aliens by the end of next year, and “Will Jesus Christ return before 2027?” A total of $38 million has been wagered — sorry, invested — for or against the latter proposition, notwithstanding Our Lord’s admonition that no one will know the day or the hour.)
If you want to read a worrying account of what it means to turn all of humankind into an active casino, I recommend Ana Maria Cox’s latest for The New Republic, “Prediction Markets are Eroding Our Civic Soul.” But my main focus here is on what prediction markets are doing to Vermont’s attempts to regulate gambling.
And it turns out that someone in the Statehouse is rather belatedly paying some attention to all of this. State Rep. Tom Stevens has introduced H.913, which would prohibit prediction markets from operating in the state. But the bill was just thrown in the hopper last week, and with the crossover deadline looming, it stands very little chance of passing this year. It’s also a “short-form bill,” which means it has yet to be fleshed out into a real piece of legislation that can advance through the process.
Now, when it comes to the Legislature, never say never. If leadership wants to get something done, they can always find a way. (If they don’t, they can always find a roadblock.) Our Betters would be wise to give this bill some serious consideration, because the gaming industry is evolving at warp speed and waiting until next year doesn’t seem very smart.
I mean, the old-fashioned 2023-style gaming industry is already enjoying a light and inconsistent regulatory touch and a tax burden they can more than comfortably afford. This brave new world of no-limits gambling? We’re not in the least prepared for that.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
I don’t want to live in a world where this is banned and legislators pick and choose which vices are legal and not. The roof didn’t fall in when gambling was legalized and it won’t when prediction markets won’t either.
Personally, I think that private equity owning single family houses, our Legislature’s inability to rein in the schools, or their inability to nurture and grow our economy are all bigger issues. The pearl clutching of the articles linked were pretty funny though, because Cox is naive enough to think that the casino isn’t rigged just like people believe the lie that the United States has always been a bastion of democracy and not an imperial oil company with an army for the last 120 years. At least thanks to Kalashi, kids are paying attention in Civics again.
And problem gambling is what, a figment of pearl-clutchers’ imaginations?
It’s been legal in this state for a minute now and like everything else the roof hasn’t fallen in. Plus, we need revenue from something in this state, because like weed the only ideas the Legislature has to raise revenue in this state besides raising taxes is to legalize vices.
“The roof hasn’t fallen in” yet. It’s been legal for what, two years? And prediction markets seem very likely to make the problem worse without contributing the least little bit to a solution.
I don’t know what the solution is, because they ‘res no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Gambling existed well before it was legal. What we can agree on is that I think that it needs to be much better regulated. As a sports ball fan, I think that that constant barrage of ads should not be allowed. I don’t think that ESPN should be allowed to talk about gambling on shows like Sportscenter, which I grew up on.
As for Kalashi, the author doesn’t quite understand what its about and how its not really any different from a crypto scam or Congress insider trading. Those things will never be enforced, so at least let me throw $20 on AOC as the Presidential nominee in 2028 and feel something. How is that different than a lottery ticket?
So I guess that other point is that people are going to gamble no matter what and I while I have no problem with the Legislature regulating it (and believe they should), the Legislature doesn’t have the moral authority to decide what medium I want to throw a couple of bucks on to entertain myself, especially after some of the other things that they are cool with.