The Rise of Online Gambling and The Tech Industry’s Embrace
Scattered Graphs on a Table. Source: Pexels.
Google has unveiled its newest AI powered services intended to be integrated with its Google Finance platform. These new tools aim to help provide users with more fine-tuned predictive market insights. Along with these tools, Google has announced that it will be integrating Polymarket and Kalshi, two of the largest online betting platforms into their finance service. This marks a continuing trend in the rise of the billion dollar online gambling industry and its embrace in the finance and tech world.
Kalshi and Polymarket operate as prediction markets, a form of gambling that in many parts of the world is classified separately from traditional betting. This loophole has allowed prediction market platforms to operate in places where gambling is explicitly banned or heavily regulated, as well as getting around more strict age requirements. These platforms allow users to place money on any hyper specific outcome, all the way from politics to sports. A $210 million Polymarket betting pool was one of the most recent notable examples of these prediction markets, in which users placed bets on whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit before July of 2025, over his trademark wartime quarter zip. Fierce debate ensued when Zelenskyy wore a black jacket to a dinner before a NATO summit. Multiple news outlets, along with Ukraine’s official Instagram account, referred to Zelenskyy as wearing a suit. A Polymarket-affiliated Twitter account also claimed that the president had worn a suit, but eventually the platform controversially ruled that he had not, sparking wide criticism as some lost millions in wagered cryptocurrency.
The specific nature of these prediction markets has raised some concern of an individual’s ability to directly manipulate outcomes while benefiting financially. In October of 2025, NBA player Terry Rozier was arrested and indicted along with 33 other individuals for their involvement in rigging sports betting outcomes. Rozier allegedly faked mid game injuries, after his alleged colluders placed bets that netted them hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts. Rozier and his co-conspirators are currently awaiting trial on these allegations.
Due to the increased prevalence of online gambling and its ease of exploitation there have been calls for stricter regulation on these prediction markets. Despite this, it is unlikely we’ll see any regulation of two U.S.-based companies, Kalshi and Polymarket, due to the outlook of the current White House administration. In January of 2025, just days before President Trump’s inauguration, his son Donald Trump Jr. was named as a new strategic advisor for Kalshi. CEO and Co-founder of Kalshi Tarek Mansour wrote about Trump Jr. joining Kalshi saying “we’re charging ahead to make event trading as commonplace and influential as traditional financial markets.” Critics and supporters alike have noted that this move will give Kalshi a direct line to a White House that has embraced clientelism in its administration. When pushed in interviews on this strategic decision to hire the president's son, Mansour has avoided acknowledging the privilege this may award his company. Additionally, President Trump nominated Brian Quintenz, a Kalshi board member, to be the chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the government body which regulates derivatives markets. Apart from the involvement of the Trump family’s aspirational political dynasty, the road to regulation will be steep due to the gambling industry’s embrace of predictive market betting. Traditional sports betting platforms have already begun to integrate predictive market betting into their services, which allows them to bypass certain laws that previously constrained them in parts of the world, such as specific US states.
Since the beginning of Web 2.0, – an era in the internet's development, defined by the prevalence of social media and user generated content – algorithms and app features have been designed to increasingly tap into the addictive nature of gambling. The pull-to-refresh feature, integrated into almost every app was designed by software developer Loren Britcher to mimic the lever on gambling slot machines. Britcher himself has expressed regret over creating the feature which creates an air of randomness, keeping users on apps for longer periods of time. Similarly, we have seen infinite video scroll features become ubiquitous across multiple social media platforms. This also continues this cycle of random gratification which has been seen by experts to create prolonged interaction with stimuli.
Naturally following this pattern, we have seen Silicon Valley investment into a gambling app called Cheddr which embraces an infinite scroll feature while serving users video content that then prompts them to place bets on outcomes described in the video. The app is financially backed by Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture capital firms in the world now betting on the success of what is described as the “Tik Tok of sports betting.” This digital platform that aims to combine two highly addictive features has received little to no media coverage outside of social media.
In October of 2025, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange announced it would be strategically investing $2 billion into Polymarket. Popular high frequency trading platforms that allow users to make rapid and remote stock investments have also begun to integrate this betting into their platforms. Currently predictive market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are inaccessible in the UK due to their inability to meet specific regulatory requirements. However, as the finance and tech world increasingly embrace predictive markets, the British government will have to endure increased pressure to allow for this new prevalent gambling. Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain's Reform party has already expressed his belief that private citizens should be allowed to freely engage with these betting platforms. Google's recent embrace in their financial services might perhaps mark a more mainstream move for these platforms that were once considered a fringe in the tech world.
In previous impact reports from the UK Gambling Commission, it has been determined that online betting sees users placing bets at a higher rate compared to destination gambling. Users have 24-hour access to place bets from anywhere, encouraging more frequency and less stigma as their activities are shielded from the public. Gambling is also associated with increased financial difficulty and bankruptcy, which translates into further strains on relationships and individuals personal lives. As the American tech industry has historically and presently influenced the development of digital technologies, other governments must be asked how they are going to protect their citizens from the dangers of gambling.
