Public acceptance of gambling has fallen among Americans, a shift best illustrated by the number of recent victories by states to curb the burgeoning industry of prediction markets, the practice of wagering on the outcomes of future events.

Last week, for example, a judge in Washington state cited the online platform Kalshi for deceptive marketing of “illegal gambling activities.” The company is now blocked from offering “event contracts” to consumers who wager on predictions in “sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, tech and science.”

The ruling was pretty easy, as the state defines gambling as “staking or risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under the person’s control or influence.” It follows other successful efforts in several states against operators of prediction markets.

These companies admit they make money off people playing the odds, or probabilities, even if some people do better research than others on possible outcomes in a given situation – such as the likelihood of the next U.S. strike on Iran, which political party will win an election, or when Taylor Swift would get married.

“Kalshi earns money from commissions and its participants on net lose money. This illustrates a paradox of commercial prediction markets,” stated a paper published in 2025 from researchers at University College Dublin. “Those with the most accurate views will most likely not participate.”

In other words, this market is for dupes, not doyens.

The popularity of prediction markets has exploded in recent years, led by Kalshi and a similar site called Polymarket. In May, Minnesota became the first state to ban prediction markets from operating within its borders. In addition, several ordinary citizens who have lost money in prediction markets have gone to court to challenge the industry.

Unlike the stock market, which improves the allocation of capital to the best-performing companies, prediction markets are solely gambling platforms, in which losers pay off winners in a contest of guessing, not with a presumed skill in mastering unpredictable factors.

That distinction might help explain why a recent Gallup poll found the “percentage of U.S. adults who report doing any kind of gambling during the past year is 45%, down from 64% a decade ago.” The survey also saw a decline in the share of people who say that gambling is “morally acceptable,” from 67% in 2016 to a new low of 57%. Since 2003, betting on college and professional sports has been relatively flat.

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The gambling industry appears to be relying on a smaller pool of people willing to lose money in games of “chance” compared with people who prefer to rely on merit, talent, and hard work.

Today’s prediction markets probably will never set up an event contract to forecast whether the compulsion for quick wealth, combined with an illusion of luck, has real staying power.