How prediction markets are transforming sports betting
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Business has been booming for the online sports betting industry. Prediction markets threw a curveball. On today’s show, sports betting industry writer and analyst Dustin Gouker joins Kimberly to explain how prediction markets are disrupting sports betting and the legal questions surrounding it. Plus, we’ll get into what it means to live in a world where you can bet on anything, anytime from your phone.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- "Why are sports betting companies getting into the prediction market?" from Marketplace
- "FanDuel, DraftKings Leaving American Gaming Association" from The Closing Line
- "From Kalshi to Polymarket to FanDuel, America Is One Giant Casino" from Business Insider
- "What is Kalshi, the predictions market that’s attracted the NCAA’s attention?" from The Athletic
- "The Sports-Betting Disaster" from The New Yorker
- How to contact the National Problem Gambling Helpline
We love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email [email protected].
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. |
| 0:13.3 | It's Thanksgiving week, and for many of us, that means lots of food, family, and watching football. |
| 0:19.5 | If you're a fan, maybe even betting on a game. Now, the online |
| 0:23.8 | sports betting industry in particular has just exploded since the Supreme Court legalized it in |
| 0:29.9 | 2018. According to a recent survey from Pew Research, now one in ten Americans say they've |
| 0:36.1 | placed an online sports bet within the past year. |
| 0:39.2 | Add to that, prediction markets have now entered the picture and have the potential to transform the sports gambling industry again. |
| 0:46.7 | So there's a lot happening here, and here to make us smart about it is Dustin Gouker. |
| 0:51.1 | He writes a gambling industry newsletter called The Closing Line and a newsletter on prediction markets called Event Horizon. Very clever. |
| 1:00.2 | He's also a consultant and has been thinking and writing about sports gambling for years. Welcome to the show, Dustin. |
| 1:07.0 | Thanks for having me, Kimberly. |
| 1:08.9 | All right. We talked about the rise of online sports betting on this show a while back, but can you give us a sense of how much the industry has grown over the past few years? |
| 1:21.1 | Yeah, I mean, exponentially since that 2018 Supreme Court decision that you mentioned was really only legal in Nevada and then really |
| 1:28.9 | dozens of states have legalized sports betting in some form. More than 20 have pretty widespread |
| 1:34.3 | online sports betting. So now we have more than a hundred billion wagered every year in the United |
| 1:41.4 | States here at places like Vandal, Draft Kings, and other online sports |
| 1:45.3 | books that have gotten, yeah, just really big in the past, you know, seven years since that |
| 1:49.5 | Supreme Court decision dropped. That is so much money. Like, is there a way to compare that to, |
| 1:57.0 | I don't know, how much people are spending on, like, sports in in general. Like how much of an economy is this? |
| 2:04.0 | It's a lot. |
| 2:04.7 | I mean, the revenue from that is actually smaller. |
| 2:06.6 | So when we talk about hundreds of tens of billions, more than a hundred billion wagered, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.