Do you think it’s going to end? I don’t, and that’s probably more concerning.

The Nba has proven they can just sweep any massive scandal under the rug and pretend nothing happened.

Prediction Markets are much worse than legal sports betting. Legal sports betting at least has Government run commissions for oversight. Prediction Markets “answer” to the CFTC and have essentially no oversight.

Players have already been degenerate gamblers tho — Mj and Chuck are famous exaplems

It’s been legal in loads of countries at a global scale for a long time. In the UK it’s been legal for 60 years

Making it legal means making it traceable, regulated and manageable. More people might get into it, but less scandals are going to occur than backroom betting where the powers at be may not even know it’s occurring.

You know who were in those back room deals? Athletes

What about the impact it has on society? Gambling is addictive. Cigarette companies basically have no adverts anywhere. Alcohol is more common and accepted in society but the rules are strict.

But since they legalized sportsbooks? It’s everywhere, all over basketball courts, commercial breaks, baseball stadiums, imagine being addicted to gambling and seeing all these ads. Ads about these bonuses, how easy it is to gamble on your phone at anytime and anywhere, credit if you lose your first $100.

I don’t think it’s the legalization that’s bad. It’s the constant advertising that sucks. Should be at least limited to like a couple minutes per air time hour and at most completely banned like cigarette ads

It’s already not ending well.

It’s terrible for any sport, and worse, for the families it tears apart. Look, I’m no bleeding heart, but I’ve seen firsthand how online gambling can mess someone up. The genie is already out of the bottle, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t get put back in there.

I’m afraid it will get worse than this

Not just the scandals or players getting hurt, but it’s affecting society writ large.

Prediction markets are going to eventually be found to have absolutely massive fraud. They are virtually unregulated, they don’t answer to typical state run gambling commissions in any way. They don’t have to pretend to care about Responsible Gambling in any way.

On a sportsbook, if people cheat, the sportsbook is desperate to catch them because when a player wins the house loses. On Kalshi, when a player wins, another player loses, the house is agnostic. So, without any real oversight, there is absolutely no reason for Kalshi to spend time, money, and effort on catching people that are cheating.

I don’t think most casual people fully understand how much worse for society prediction markets are than even legal sports betting, which, is also pretty terrible right now.

I hope Pablo drops another video after the all-star break that’s as hard-hitting as the first time he dropped the aspiration shit.

Last week, he had an episode on the gamification of everything, including kalshi

The NBA just doing its best to keep Pablo busy as hell.

Although in this case, Pablo could just tweet IF UNREGULATED, THEN FRAUD. And that would pretty much cover it. Everyone knows how this is gonna go.

Pablo already did an episode on prediction markets a week ago (with the guy who literally wrote the book on it 20 years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzaH2f9OHy4

But yeah once players can bet on themselves with no restrictions you can’t trust anything you’re seeing anymore.

He’s already done an interview on Pod Save America discussing this whole debacle. Pablo does a great job breaking down how awful prediction markets are. And how the Trump administration is deregulating the gambling industry to line their own pockets.

Trump is on the board of Kalshi too, so this is an extra awful look for Giannis.

[Soft Whisper breeze] Pabloooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

a revolting “bet on anything” company

Nonsense. They are a “predictions” company. There is no betting happening. There’s a big difference!

I’m not holding out much hope but I do want to see real pushback to Giannis personally and to the NBA for allowing this sort of partnership to go ahead

That ship sailed a few years ago when the gambling scandals started.

Gambling scandals have existed since before the start of the NBA. The problem with the Kalshi sponsorship in particular is that prediction markets are completely unregulated unlike sportsbooks.

If the Rozier, Billups, Damon Jones shit had happened on Kalshi instead of with a licensed sportsbook, not only would it never be caught, it wouldn’t even be illegal, (probably would break the NBA CBA and possibly against TOS on Kalshi, but they wouldn’t even have any financial incentive to catch them because they dont actually “book” the bets.)

People hate the legalization of gambling (rightfully so because we do not have the adequate infrastructure to mitigate gambling addiction or combat it when it occurs), but prediction markets are markedly more dystopian than legalized gambling.

I mean Jokic already did do this years ago… so it’s weird this feels like the tipping point

Giannis built a player brand based on family, loyalty, fierce competitiveness and now his true colours are being revealed.

He’s just as greedy and petty as anyone else and while he probably has lots of good memories about Milwaukee, it’s obvious that more championships and money are what really matters to him. He’ll leave Milwaukee the second it’s beneficial for him.

Maybe he wants this heel turn, but a multimillion dollar athlete investing in what is essentially a gambling platform is just a bad look and is going to leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths.

The black Sox rigged the World Series in 1919. Sports have always been part of the gambling apparatus. 

Celebrities have been insanely greedy for a long time. Before crypto and sports betting, so many of them were putting their names on any shitty liquor they could possibly find.

Even ignoring investment into addictive vices, just advertisements in general. Does Jennifer Aniston really need to be in every commercial known to man when she is making like $20 million every year still just for Friends?

I actually like how bold they are. Immediately tells me which celebrities I should and shouldn’t like. Told me everything I needed to know about DeAaron Fox after he defrauded his fans with his NFT scam. Used to like Giannis but now I wouldn’t touch anything associated with him.

A big reason I feel no sympathy for players and their contract negotiations or cap negotiations. I want what is best for the sport/competitiveness of it. And all these players and owners are in it together making generational money. Why do I care if one side gets a little more than the other?

And add in AI soon as well, if not already - that’s the holy trifecta of enshittificaton

only getting started baby. Throw AI into the mix with mass poverty and we got ourselves a nice stew goin

Here we are facing a climate crisis that will wreak havoc on the planet, and we’re building massive data centers which consume as much power as entire countries just so we can mine faux currencies and train chat bots.

It’s so fucking dumb.

Moreso the lack of regulations. If you don’t punish politicians for insider trading, then you can’t punish athletes and celebrities for doing the same.

The answer is obvious. He’s going to make a fuck ton of money doing this. Other companies have more risk. This one is all but guaranteed to make him richer.

I think it’s very easy. It probably went something like this.

Kalshi: “Would you like lots of money?”

Giannis: “Yes.”

Kalshi: “Cool. Please sign here.”

I just don’t understand how they thought it was a good idea to announce immediately after the trade deadline. Nobody thought that would be a bad look? I know it’s not gonna have any real consequences anyway so who cares, but there’s no reason to announce that at the worst possible time

It’s explicitly allowed in the CBA to own stakes in or be sponsored by gambling companies and the NBA itself has gambling partnerships. LeBron has been a fanduel partner since 2024.

I agree the NBA shouldn’t allow this but the ship to nip this in the bud sailed years ago.

I forgot about that.  The “incorrect” reports about who was going to be drafted with the top pick moved betting lines (Banchero class).

Tbf. In this day and age if you fall for a celebrity rug pull crypto… that’s on you

It’s going to ruin way more than sports, just sit back and watch the show.

You already hear the stories of people betting everything they have, losing it all and then killing themselves.

Then the family is left to pick up the pieces. Just a sad ass cliché.

Enough is never enough.

Same here. The trade stuff was all part of negotiation between Giannis, the Bucks, who Giannis wanted to go to, who the Bucks could get a good package from, etc. It’s a part of the game I hate but it’s how you have to play it.

Gambling promotion is just gross.

It’s crazy that this situation has all been put on Giannis when Shams (sponsored by fanduel) was the one who was spreading all these rumours in the first place.

Giannis is going to have some kid re-living his life when the dad gambles the rent money and they become homeless, what a guy he loves to share.

Dude is a sellout piece of shit like just about every other person who wants to be a billionaire. Oh well, at least I don’t give a shit now when he leaves.

if the integrity drops, good. fuck them for allowing it, consider your neighbors and the youth. we aren’t ready for the social implications of widespread gambling issues that they are unleashing on us.

The people blaming Giannis for the trade speculation really are a special kind of stupid.

They figured a way to securitirized sports betting no it’s technically investing lol

Technically it’s futures (stocks trading), but essentially it’s betting on sports, politics, and all sorts of things.

You buy a contract for say 50 cents that pays out 1 dollar if you’re right.

And it’s actually quite clever as it’s basically using a derivative that already exists and is widely used to bet on anything (futures contracts) and asked wtf is the difference if we put it on the result of a game

Even worse if you can believe it. They’ve found a needle to thread with so called “prediction markets” which are just betting but use careful language to be legally distinct and avoid the already soft regulations the US has. It’s framed as “trading” and against other people instead of the house, so you can essentially buy a “contract” anticipating a certain outcome, and someone else can buy the other side anticipating the opposite/a different outcome.

They offer these contracts on everything, sports, politics, the weather, White House speech lengths etc. And the problem is with no regulation, someone like Giannis, who has immense power to influence the outcome of a “tradeable contract” like “will Giannis stay in Milwaukee past the deadline”, can both be a paid partner of the company offering these contracts and directly manipulate the outcome for personal gain. I cannot believe we’ve ended up here and at the same time it was inevitable.

They were offering grocery money in NYC to hook people who can’t afford food. Should tell you everything you need to know about the business and I have lost a great deal of respect for Giannis as a result.