At a panel in Chicago, Anthony D’Angelo, Fanatics Betting and Gaming’s head of responsible gaming, said prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket lacked the regulation and customer safeguards expected of licensed betting operators. He likened them to offshore, unlicensed sportsbooks and said the products were missing the kind of controls that Fanatics, FanDuel and DraftKings use.
D’Angelo also argued that prediction markets should not be treated as a separate category when they function like sports betting. His criticism was blunt: products that do not have the controls used by regulated sportsbook operators amount, in his view, to illegal sports betting markets.
The panel, held at the National Conference of State Legislatures Legislative Summit, also heard from David Sasaki of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Sasaki said about one in four Americans have or have had an online sports betting account, and that the figure rises to nearly half among men aged 18 to 49.
He said the rise had been especially pronounced among young men and that prediction markets made the problem harder.
The discussion also reflected a blurrier industry map than the labels suggest. The Sports Betting Alliance includes DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics and BetMGM, while the Coalition for Prediction Markets counts Kalshi, Crypto.com, Coinbase, Robinhood and Underdog among its members, with BetMGM and Underdog noted as exceptions to the usual divide.
Kalshi’s legal and regulatory backdrop has also deepened. A Third Circuit opinion said KalshiEX is a CFTC-licensed designated contract market that offers event contracts, including sports-related contracts that drew a New Jersey cease-and-desist letter. The court later upheld an injunction blocking New Jersey from enforcing its law against Kalshi’s sports-related contracts, finding Kalshi had shown a reasonable chance of success on federal pre-emption.
Separately, the CFTC’s enforcement division issued an advisory in February after two prediction-market enforcement matters involving misuse of nonpublic information and fraud on KalshiEX. In one case, a trader appeared to trade on his own candidacy; in the other, Kalshi found that an editor for a YouTube channel likely had advance knowledge of video content. The advisory said designated contract markets have an independent duty to maintain audit trails, conduct surveillance and enforce rules against prohibited practices.
D’Angelo closed by saying the industry needs a sustainable, long-term model that protects customers, and that operators, regulators, advocacy groups and researchers all have a role in building it.
