The Current - When betting odds enter the news

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

And prediction markets, where people bet real money on real-world events are moving into the news itself. CNN and CNBC have struck deals with a company called Kalshi, bringing betting odds into their coverage of politics, the economy, and even war. Reporter Danny Funt explains why this alarms journalists and ethicists, the risks of conflicts of interest and insider trading, and what happens to public trust when news becomes something you can wager on.

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If you watch the news, you're used to seeing polls and projections reported. Well, now, some American news outlets are also showing betting odds. It sounds like this. In terms of what happens next, obviously, the United States says it's running Venezuela, but what are the prediction markets say, who do they think will be running Venezuela? Yeah, who do we think is going to be leading Venezuela? Look, it's a little bit of a cluster car right here.

What do we talk about? Chance of leading Venezuela at the end of 2026. Delcia Rodriguez at 43%. Amundo Gonzalez at 24%. And then you got Machado here at 20%. The bottom line is this. There's still a lot to be determined here. That's CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enton, rolling betting odds into news coverage about their top story. CNN and CNBC have struck deals with a prediction market company called Kalshi.

This is a platform where people can wager real money on real world events, like who will run Venezuela. In the United States, somebody may. made more than $400,000 after they put a bet on whether Nicholas Maduro would be captured by the 31st of January. You can also bet on election outcomes and interest rates and even bets on conflicts, such as if Israel will strike Gaza on a specific day. These prediction markets are growing fast, trading in the billions of dollars, $28 billion last year alone. Danny Funt is a reporter with an upcoming book on sports betting. He's written about news betting in the New Yorker magazine in an article titled America's betting craze has spread to its news networks. Danny is

in Charlotte, North Carolina. Danny, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Let's run through a few definitions. What is the prediction market? It's a funny term because it sounds like an investment vehicle and that's what they're seen as in the eyes of federal regulators as an exchange where you can make trades, but practice. specifically speaking, this functions like so many other ways to gamble online nowadays, where you risk money on any sort of current event. And if your bet is correct, you win money. And if you lose, you lose money. So functionally, it's a lot like gambling. But in a legal sense, it's not. And that's a whole can of worms in its own right.

Tell me about then this company that is at the center of the story that you have written. It's worth something like $11 billion. Yes, a fairly new startup that initially had its eyes set on election betting, so who will control Congress or any legislature who will win a given election, whether a bill will be passed, that sort of thing. And that was in a very gray area of the law where a lot of people don't like the idea of betting on elections for fairly straightforward reasons. but recently they got in the business of sports betting, and that's become the overwhelming majority of activity on Kalshi is bets on who's going to win a football game, a hockey game, you name it. But they talk in pretty grandiose terms about hoping that one day

you could bet on just about anything. Anything that two people can disagree on, they'd like you to be able to bet on it on Kalshi. The CEO of the company said the long-term vision for Kalshi is, in his words, to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of every and any difference in opinion. It's remarkable, right? And I think financialize gets to the point I was making, which is we're putting this in the

lingo of investing and, you know, sort of legitimate or conventional financial activity, when in fact it seems to a lot of people, including some lawmakers, like yet enough form of gambling. And if we're going to describe it as a financial product, that's risky because we maybe want to install some consumer protections to call it what it is, a method of gambling. And so there has been, and we'll talk more about this, gambling that has been integrated into sports. But now, as I said, this is being integrated into some news networks. What is the deal between these news outlets and Kalshi? So with CNN and CNBC, they've agreed, to exclusively reference

Kalshi odds during their coverage. So not only will they be talking about something and say and, oh, by the way, betters suggest that there's I don't know, a 30% chance that this person will be leading Venezuela by the end of the year or a

60% chance that Trump will fire this member of the cabinet in the coming months. They'll also have a ticker at the bottom of their screen running all sorts of Cali odds on you name it, even things like what film will win the Academy Award for Best Picture this year. In addition, CNBC on its website will have references to Calci, and if people

click on that and go on to sign up so that they can bet on Calci, CNBC will get a referral fee for funneling new customers toward this prediction market. So you could imagine all the conflicts of interest that might come about with how they're going to report on the news and also report on prediction markets, which are becoming, you know, a really hot commodity to a lot of investors. People can bet on just about anything. I mean, people were betting on whether the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman, would step out of his limousine wearing a suit. You can also, you can bet on whether Drake is going to be invited to the White House. Right. It's kind of staggering how much trivial stuff

like you just mentioned is available and also really high-stake stuff like whether a war will break out or whether a country will be bombed in the near future. Polymarket, which is Kalshi's rival, another prediction market that's exploded in recent months and is also

pursuing these sorts of deals with news outlets. They're a lot more brazen with some of those examples. So they've got all sorts of things on, you know, high stakes geopolitical events that it seems odd to put it mildly to, you know, risk money hoping it's going to go one way or another based on, you know, our world hanging in the balance. In the world of sports betting, if you watch sports coverage now, it's hard to distinguish between analysis and what might happen in between, you know, football quarters. or a period or what have you in hockey and kind of a betting promotion or a betting ad. How do you think this is going to be incorporated into news coverage?

Yeah, that parallel struck me is really important because you'll remember not too long ago, sports outlets went way out of their way to avoid even mentioning gambling. They certainly weren't touting the odds during a broadcast. It was largely verboten to even acknowledge, that gambling exists. And so suddenly this deluge of advertising dollars changed that entirely to the point that they're promoting bets, specific bets, and urging you to sign up with a sports book

and all these different things constantly when you watch sports. And to me, and a lot of people who cover this, it wouldn't be too surprising if the exact same thing happened with the news where for a while they barely mentioned sites like Kalshi and Polymarket, they certainly didn't incorporate it in their coverage. Maybe before long they'll be saying during, you know, a roundtable discussion. And oh, by the way, I'd sure want to bet on XYZ if I were on Kalshi or our bet of the morning is, you know, bet on this guy to be elected president or to win a nomination or, again, the sky's the limit on what you can bet on these sites. that sort of integration seems honestly inevitable, at least to some extent. And the question is how many

news outlets will cave and start doing that. Why would CNN and CNBC, and the suggestion is that everybody else will follow suit, why would they do this? For one, so much of the news business is facing really desperate financial times. CNBC and CNN have had layoffs. They've had turnover among their executives, changing hands of corporate ownership. They're really desperate to turn things around. And just, again, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the similarities seem so striking to me, just as a lot of sports outlets were fairly desperate. And so in a prior era, they might have said, we don't want to integrate our business with gambling. When you're treading water, it's a lot harder to stand on principle that way. I could see companies like

CNN and CNBC and their competitors feeling that way where, gee, it's hard to turn away a influx of revenue, even if it means encouraging our viewers to gamble. What do you, I mean, this is an obvious question, but what do they give up in doing that? Well, for one thing, they argue that it somehow enhances their coverage, like, look, this is potentially interesting information that maybe our viewers would like to know about. But in fact, they're constricting, they're tying their hands because these deals are exclusives where CNN and CNBC have said we'll only reference Kalshi when we reference prediction markets. They won't reference polymarket, Fanduel and Draft Kings, two of the top sports books,

have recently launched prediction markets. They won't reference them. So in the same way that it would be bizarre if when talking about politics, you signed a deal to only reference one polling operation, let's say. Clearly, your viewers would want to know all the polls or all the most relevant polls on a given topic. I find that strange that they've agreed to only reference Kalshi. But it goes even further than that

and maybe even more dangerous than that in that the spread of gambling poses a serious health threat, and that's not just pearl clutching. There's more and more evidence of alarming rates of problem gambling, especially among young people. So I worry that there could be a kind of chilling effect, where if you're getting all this revenue from a company like Kalshi, will you be willing to say it's potentially dangerous

to get carried away betting on Kalshi? I think that's a serious conflict of interest. And that in some ways legitimizes it. If Kalshi is in bed with CNN or CNBC or down the road, you have. of betting operations that are aligned with the New York Times or Bloomberg or what have you, that it legitimizes online gambling in some way? Absolutely. And, you know, it seems like it's becoming more and more normalized that people bet on all sorts of things.

But this is really a new frontier, the idea of betting on what you're reading in your newspaper or watching on the news. That's something different in these sites are new commodities. So the idea that we are going to normalize that and give them the imprimatur of, as CNN calls itself, the most trusted name in news, is a big deal. And I just want to return quickly to even the name prediction market or the term that they like to use of, you know, financializing disagreements. It all has this air of legitimacy or of innocent, you know, investing strategy, just like stocks or bonds or what have you. And if the news outlets that they partner with buy into that and don't call it what it is, which is gambling, that does a real disservice to their audience. On its website, Kalshi says that this integration will help CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enten, in their words, tap into real-time prediction markets data to better inform and fact-check his reporting.

What do you make of that? Is this going to help with fact-checking? That, I don't even know where to begin. It doesn't make sense to me. there's a lot I'd love for them to say more about that because it doesn't compute. The other thing is

not all prediction market specific things that you might be betting on are created equal. So the more money that is risked, the more valuable the information might be. Like if millions and millions of dollars

are being bet on who will be elected president, those odds might have some predictive value. But in one of the first days that after this deal was struck, Harry Enten referenced, I don't even remember, but it was something obscure about government checks that might be sent out to compensate for Trump's tariff policy. And a very marginal amount of money had been bet on that specific market on Kalshi. So the data scientists and economists and experts in this told me, you really wouldn't want to be. drawing a lot of attention to that. It doesn't have a lot of statistical value. But because they

have a financial interest now in promoting Kalshi, maybe they're going to be suckered into touting that sort of stuff. What is the feedback loop that people are worried about? You spoke with a political scientist at Stanford, Andrew Hall, about this, saying the prediction markets could create a kind of feedback loop. What does that mean? It's very interesting because, you know, on its face or in the abstract, you might think, okay, a prediction market is kind of often. to the side, observing who's up, who's down, developments, and what have you, and reflecting the odds of something happening accordingly. In reality, a lot of trading activity in these markets is not only responsive to the news, it's responsive to movement in the market. So let's say there's

a market on which cabinet member President Trump will fire first in this administration. If CNN spends a lot of time covering that market, then it might put a damper on the person who's most likely to be fired and there could be more trades, making the odds even greater that that person is fired, meaning CNN might cover it even more. We know President Trump is a voracious consumer of TV news.

He might see all that and say, I'm tired of hearing that Pam Bondi or Pete Hegsseth is likely on the way out, I'm going to get it over with and fire them. So the prediction market is directly influencing the news. And that has some real world consequences, particularly with elections. If you see that someone is an overwhelming favorite to win an election, perhaps you'll be less likely to bother waiting in line at the polls to vote for them.

So you really have to be careful of how much value you give it in your coverage because of that. People have talked about this same thing when it comes to polling. Is this different than polling? do you think? Yeah, I think so, just because it's so direct. There's such clear evidence that when something is covered, particularly in a big outlet like the New York Times or CNN or a major national news operation,

it does move the market and influence a lot of trading activity. So as do polls, but I think that cause and effect with markets is really pronounced. I've even talked to people about, in the same way that news networks are reluctant to cover exit polls before the polls have closed because they don't want to discourage people from voting if it seems likely that a candidate is going to win or lose. Maybe you'd want to be just as cautious with how you handle prediction markets ahead of an election. But at the same time, if we're saying these are so wonderful because they offer a way of anticipating the future, why then would you not

cover them on the eve of an election. So it's a lot of novel dilemmas for journalists to have to sort through. Hey there, I'm David Kahn. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you got to know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401. Check out, this is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts.

You have a book coming out about sports betting, and we are now in a world where, I mean, you can read, you know, you talk about the New York Times, the athletic is part of the New York Times sports coverage, and you'll read a story about sports betting, and the ads in all of the ad breaks will be for a sports betting company. Sports betting is everywhere now. It is consumed the world of sports. How did we get to this place where gambling used to be something, as you said, that people certainly didn't talk about it in polite company, and it is now not just everywhere, but it's big business such that recognized and established news companies would be willing to put a toe in that water? Yeah, the reversal in a relatively short amount of time

could not be more profound, as you alluded to. In sports, commissioners, of the NHL and the NFL and the NBA literally said this is an evil that if legalized and brought into the mainstream would destroy our leagues. So to hear them become the biggest advocates for gambling and to integrate their business so enthusiastically really makes your headspin. I'd say a few of the biggest reasons why that happened. One is they were fearful that their TV deals would be jeopardized by people cutting them. the court on cable subscriptions. That obviously hurts advertising. So they looked down the road and said, what can we do to ensure that people stay glued to their TVs and paying to watch

our games? And there's a lot of evidence, including evidence that they had commissioned around the time that legalization was happening that shows that gamblers are voracious consumers of sports. And just to go back to what we were talking about with the news, I think that could be. be a reason why an outlet like CNN might be interested in promoting gambling because they think more people will watch if the odds are at play here exactly and the other thing is just that the covid really turned sports on its head and if you weren't selling tickets to your games because it wasn't safe to allow fans in the stands uh if you had to pause for months and you weren't getting revenue from tv the leagues media even lawmakers that for facing tax deficits

all we're looking for something that could quickly make up for that. And so their resistance to embracing gambling crumbled facing that situation. And it's, you know, once the, once the doors open on that, it's very hard to close it. So even though, you know, their business is back thriving, they're still looking for more ways to push gambling on the public. And you think that this is inevitable when it comes to the broader news market, that the doors are open because of the amount of money that we're talking about, that the doors are open to not just CNN and CNBC, but everybody essentially will have to fall in line. There's just a bandwagon effect that we saw with sports where veteran leaders of various

newsrooms at sports outlets said, sure, we are a little reluctant about promoting gambling. We know the risks involved, but our competitors are doing it. It's just too hard for us to not get on board and turn down that money. it's hard for me to imagine news outlets won't make the same decision, especially because these companies are growing at such a phenomenal rate. They have billions of dollars in investments. They're spending like crazy. They're marketing so aggressively to try to convert new customers and seize market share. It's going to be overwhelmingly tempting for all sorts of companies, including news outlets, to not do business with these gambling.

operators. This is, I don't know what to say. It's fascinating slash terrifying, terrifying slash fascinating. Danny, it's really good to talk to. I hope we had the chance to talk more about gambling and sports gambling when your book comes out. In the meantime, thank you very much for this. I'd love that. Thank you, Matt. Danny Funt is a reporter who has written about betting on the news for the New Yorker magazine. His book, coming out later on this month, is called Everybody Loses the Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. More CBC Podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.