Whether grabbing headlines with multi-billion-dollar valuations or dominating popular culture by being featured on South Park and 60 Minutes, the rapid rise of prediction markets cannot be ignored – particularly by employers.
Prediction markets allow anyone to wager on literally anything at any time from a mobile device or computer. At its core, a prediction market is a platform where users can bet on the outcome of future events by buying and selling shares in the predicted outcomes or likelihood of those events like sports results, elections, or entertainment awards akin to futures contracts on commodities or stocks.
Such wagering was largely prohibited by federal law until the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) adopted a hands-off regulatory approach under the new administration, resulting in approximately $28 billion traded on prediction markets in 2025.
Today’s bets or “predictions” are not limited to sports and elections. They can also include a company’s personnel decisions, product launches, and even sensitive health information of coworkers. For example, real money has or currently is being staked on the following:
The universe of employees who may have access to such information is vast....
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