Americans head to the polls every four years to elect their president. American election bettors, however, can now go daily to a growing number of apps and websites to wager on the next president and so much more, as the avenues for political punting keep expanding.
- After resolving a legal dispute with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, PredictIt has removed its trader cap and increased the maximum bet allowed, paving the way for broader participation in political prediction markets.
- Political betting is no longer limited to election cycles, with markets expanding to include a wide range of political outcomes such as approval ratings, mayoral elections, and legislative actions.
- While some platforms, like PredictIt, remain limited to political betting, others like Kalshi and Crypto.com are navigating legal challenges to offer broader event contracts, including for sports, sparking an intense legal and regulatory debate.
The latest sign of the increasing interest in betting on U.S. election odds, and the desire by various operators to meet that growing demand, was this week’s announcement by PredictIt of “significant updates” to its platform.
Those updates were made possible by the settlement of a longstanding beef between PredictIt, one of the oldest prediction markets in the U.S., and its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Thanks to the @CFTC and Acting Chairman @CarolineDPham, PredictIt is excited to announce major updates, including no trader limits and a larger position limit: https://t.co/P4eUX8hQcd #PredictIt #Forecasting #Markets #NAL pic.twitter.com/nbz6VUsH1i
— PI (@PredictIt) July 15, 2025
The CFTC and PredictIt had been scrapping in court over the status of the “no-action” letter the regulator provided to the prediction market in 2014, which allowed for betting on U.S. elections on the “experimental” platform.
However, the two sides said in June that they had reached an agreement in principle to resolve the litigation, and PredictIt is now expanding as a result.
Those changes include the removal of the 5,000-trader cap on PredictIt’s event contracts, meaning an unlimited number of punters can now bet their opinion (buying shares of "yes" or "no") on any given election or political outcome.
"The [CFTC's Division of Market Oversight] is satisfied that the investment caps, as described in this letter, will keep the Market small-scale, while permitting a liquid market that generates high quality data for academic study," a CFTC official wrote in a July 14 letter to the new operator of PredictIt, the Prediction Market Research Consortium.
Getting to the foggy bottom
PredictIt has also increased the amount that can be wagered on a contract from $850 to $3,500, which just so happens to be the federal individual campaign contribution limit for elections.
“Some people are passionate about sports, some people are passionate about theater, culture, and entertainment,” said John Aristotle Phillips, co-creator of PredictIt, in an interview with Covers earlier this week. “A lot of people are passionate about politics. I don't mean just partisan. I mean, they just care deeply.”
PredictIt functions as a now decade-old “engagement tool” for people and politics, as well as a method for gauging public opinion on any given matter, Phillips said.
“These markets are not 100% accurate,” he added. “They don't have 20/20 vision on the future, but they do move the curtains aside a little bit, they clear some of the fog.”
Hold me back, bro
PredictIt has been cleared for expansion at a time of serious change for federally regulated prediction markets in the U.S. The CFTC under President Donald Trump has a different view of event contracts than the regulator did under Joe Biden, creating a much more hands-off approach to regulation.
After a legal battle separate from the one PredictIt fought, Kalshi and other prediction markets offered event contracts tied to last year’s presidential election that proved popular, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in trading volume. Those operators have since branched out into an ever-increasing number of subjects, such as sports.
While those sports event contracts have triggered a fair amount of controversy since their arrival on the scene late last year, the number of betting markets tied to politics has been booming as well.
PredictIt had “self-imposed” a limit on the number of political markets it was putting up during its legal battle with the CFTC, Phillips said. With that done, so is the need for that limit.
The PredictIt site now boasts plenty of "new arrivals," such as markets for who will place second in the New York City mayoral election, who will be President Trump's next nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, and what Trump's approval rating will be next week.
“There are tons of markets that people are interested in that have an impact on … people's daily lives, or more long-term that people just want to forecast,” Phillips said.
The never-ending campaign
As a result, betting on U.S. politics is now a more or less 365-day thing, rather than hinging on what voters decide every two or four years. Kalshi likewise has a variety of political betting markets up, including what bills will be signed into law this year and whether Trump will create a national bitcoin reserve.
Moreover, markets such as who will be Democratic nominee for president in 2028, who will win the NYC mayoral race, and de facto parlays of who will win the House, Senate and Presidency in the 2028 election all have eight-figure dollar trading volume at Kalshi.
Online sports betting sites in the U.S. are eyeing the possibilities for themselves as well.
“Definitely something we're looking at in advance of the next presidential election, and potentially it'll be an opportunity to look at something sooner,” DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said in November.
More recently, Front Office Sports reported that DraftKings is in talks to buy Railbird Exchange, which was recently approved by the CFTC as a so-called designated contract market (DCM). In other words, a prediction market.
The chief executive of U.K.-based sports betting company Smarkets also said recently that they are working toward a DCM license in the U.S. That expansion could still happen even if sports event contracts are deemed unlawful by the courts.
“Politics are only interesting in the United States once every two years, four years, a little bit like the Olympics,” Smarkets CEO Jason Trost said during an episode of Eilers & Krejcik Gaming’s Zero Latency podcast. “But I still think it's worth doing, even if we don't get sports. It's a 1,000,000,000% no-brainer with sports, but I think it's a 100% no-brainer with politics. So we're going to do it, regardless of whether … sports gets struck down.”
Throw in other prediction markets like Robinhood, Crypto.com, and Polymarket, which may be plotting a return to legal status in the U.S., and suddenly political bettors are being presented with the possibility of a growing number of options for getting down.
That means, after a period of relative scarcity for election betting in the U.S., a bit of competition could be brewing. It also means there could more diversity of insight provided by prediction markets. For example, the odds projected by the wagering of smaller-dollar bettors on PredictIt could differ from what’s generated by betting at Kalshi or crypto-based Polymarket. Time will tell whose forecasts are more accurate.
“The jury's out on whether you want markets that will take unlimited mega bets, hundreds of millions or more, or emphasize small-dollar bets,” Phillips said.
PredictIt may be expanding the number of bettors and bet sizes, but the “whales” popping up on Kalshi or Polymarket are not yet welcome. Having a position limit equal to the campaign contribution cap is also a way of addressing concerns about deep-pocketed bettors trying to manipulate markets in favor of their candidate or policy.
“For those who are concerned about the influence of money in politics, this might give them some comfort,” Phillips said.
Less than 6 months ago, we launched our first sports market.
— Kalshi (@Kalshi) July 16, 2025
Today, we crossed $2 billion in sports trading volume. pic.twitter.com/no0uw0wkqt
Nevertheless, prediction markets are quickly becoming synonymous with betting on much more than politics. More specifically, the relatively recent move into sports is causing legal and regulatory uproar.
Several regulators of online sports betting in the U.S. have sought to stop Kalshi and others from offering sports event contracts, arguing (among other things) that they are gambling, plain and simple. Kalshi and Crypto.com have fought back through the courts, and have so far argued successfully enough to allow the trading of those contracts to continue.
While the litigation is ongoing, the result to date is that there is now a de facto form of sports wagering available in all 50 U.S. states, rather than just the ones that have legalized that kind of betting. It’s into this new status quo that PredictIt is expanding.
There are differences between a Kalshi and a PredictIt. Kalshi, for instance, is a DCM, licensed by the CFTC and able to “self-certify” event contracts, including, for the moment, ones tied to sports.
PredictIt, meanwhile, remains an “experimental project” that operates under a no-action letter from the CFTC, outlining what the prediction market can and cannot do. That no-action letter “makes clear that [PredictIt] is restricted to political events, such as contracts related to the outcomes of elections and other significant political questions not involving war, terrorism, or assassination," the July 14 notice said.
What will Trump's @ Real Clear Polling Approval be on July 23? https://t.co/EuljhWB40f #PredictIt #Forecasting #President #TrumpApproval pic.twitter.com/7AaWOP9RLE
— PI (@PredictIt) July 15, 2025
One of the other, more technical changes for PredictIt is that it is now overseen by a not-for-profit entity known as the Prediction Market Research Consortium, which is advised by academics from Princeton, Rutgers, and Wake Forest. The PredictIt platform was previously tied to Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
“There is a research component to what we do,” Phillips said. “That has been the case for the last decade, and that's the basis on which the no-action letter was initially granted and was renewed and expanded.”
Sorry, old sport
So, in short: no sports from PredictIt. It will remain a politics-only prediction market.
However, a company tied to PredictIt’s current “market servicer,” the for-profit Aristotle International Inc., has been pursuing a designated contract market license from the CFTC for several years. If that’s obtained, a PredictIt-connected company would be able to offer whatever event contracts are legal at that point.
Phillips said there’s “a bright future” for regulated prediction markets, and he believes there could be “dozens of iterations” when all is said and done.
That, though, is all to be determined. For the moment, PredictIt is focused on its bread-and-butter: politics.
In this, Phillips sees prediction markets serving as a force to counteract “fake news” and provide people with another source of political data. While the space is getting more competitive, PredictIt still believes it has a key role to play, touting itself as "the nation’s premier political prediction market."
“No one's being hurt when people put small bets on future events using their own money,” Phillips said. “And there’s a collective good that's being generated.”
