The prediction market industry (I guess that is indeed a thing now) appears to be celebrating its arrival into the mainstream today, thanks to an episode of "South Park."
Yes, "South Park" talked about prediction markets last night, and it's been said that any publicity can be good publicity. Prediction markets also make money from trading fees, which means you need people to trade. They won't trade on your platform if they don't know you exist.
Well, more people certainly know about prediction markets today than they did yesterday. However, "South Park," in discussing prediction markets, also summed up and depicted the concerns about those markets, whether people recognized them or not. It showed a real understanding of gambling more broadly.
In short, they nailed it. It was a crash course on the new age of wagering in which we now live.
what is happening on South Park 😭 pic.twitter.com/letAixQ8Fv
— Polymarket (@Polymarket) September 25, 2025
A quick primer: Prediction markets are apps and websites where you can go to bet "yes" or "no" on certain event outcomes, such as elections, economic data releases, and, yes, sporting events. You can buy a "yes" contract for 50 cents, and potentially earn another 50 cents if your prediction is correct.
Since they are federally regulated, prediction markets make it possible to bet on stuff in all 50 states, including the ones that haven't legalized sports wagering.
The episode even suggests prediction markets are something that’s available via a “loophole” in gambling laws, a suggestion with which a few state sports betting regulators might agree.
And, yes, prediction markets can be fun! They can let you make a bit of money if you’re right (or lose it if you're wrong)! They can hedge you against stuff happening that you don't want to happen!
No one was necessarily hedging against economic turbulence in last night's episode. Furthermore, prediction markets were framed as “peer-to-peer” betting in the episode, with no mention of market makers.
The half-hour episode, titled "Conflict of Interest," didn’t mention sports event contracts either. But it didn’t need to, because everything else said could apply to those hotly contested contracts, as well as the prediction market predicament more broadly.
Lottery ticket mentality
"South Park's" prediction market episode, without explicitly saying so, highlighted fears of underage gambling in the U.S., such as the "normalization" of betting among younger people. Much of the wagering talk in the episode is among kids. So there's that.
"South Park" also nailed the psyche of online sports betting in the U.S. that is quickly and increasingly being applied to federally regulated prediction markets like Kalshi (which was mentioned by name in the episode, along with Polymarket).
For example, characters said in the episode they “like to bet on longshots” and that betting longer odds is more fun.
Anyone who has watched the maturation of legal sports betting in the U.S. knows the name of the game has become parlays, same-game and otherwise. So, right there in the episode is an understanding of the “bet-a-little-to-win-a-lot” mentality of an average American bettor (settle down, sharps). This popular attitude is beneficial to the gambling industry, because longshot parlays lose way more often than they win.
The same applies to prediction markets, which are still trying to perfect the parlay. Who wants to bet “no” at a prediction market to try to turn 95 cents into a dollar? Wouldn't you rather bet “yes” instead, and try to turn five cents into a buck?
Well, as it happens, "South Park" has an answer to who may prefer the "no" side, which was “Cartman.”
I’m trying to keep it as spoiler-free as possible, so, in short, Cartman spies an opportunity to make a quick buck using prediction markets. He eggs on a character to egg on another character, in the hopes that it will make the odds for betting “no” on something longer and longer, despite the actual likelihood of “no” being very high.
“It’s called a conflict of interest, you guys,” says Cartman. “It’s a way to make free money.”
Cartman succeeds in his initial efforts. The odds soar in his favor, and he swipes his mother’s debit card (!) to make a big bet on “no.”
“This is the safest investment ever,” Cartman says. “Nothing can possibly go wrong.”
An entire South Park episode about everyone being obsessed with Kalshi’s app.
— Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) September 25, 2025
Prediction markets are the next breakout consumer application of this generation. pic.twitter.com/nhcUNsR3sL
The words left unsaid by the episode (unless I missed them) were “market manipulation." However, that was indeed what "South Park" was laying out for viewers. And that is (whether warranted or not) something that concerns people about prediction markets, worries that wagers can be influenced by people who have inside information or access.
These concerns are also there when it comes to sports event contracts offered by prediction markets, a still-young development that has leagues and teams worried about what it may mean for game integrity. Those leagues and teams have already had their share of integrity scandals tied to state-regulated sports betting; now they may worry about federally regulated sports betting.
"This rapid expansion of sports prediction markets has occurred in the absence of the kind of robust, sports-specific regulatory framework that would aim to protect the integrity of the games being played," an NBA official wrote in a letter to the acting chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in May.
More on the CFTC in a minute.
First, though, prediction markets don’t want to be viewed as an integrity concern. Kalshi, for example, announced in March a partnership with integrity monitoring firm IC360.
Even so, betting markets can be twitchy. They move on information and action, even if that info is wrong and that action misplaced. The more esoteric the market, the more twitchy it could be. And "South Park’s" example was, well, let’s call it very esoteric (albeit connected to a much bigger issue).
"South Park's" prediction market episode also highlights the concerns about betting markets that can be in poor taste. Prediction markets have tended to be a little more cavalier about content, at least relative to state-regulated sportsbooks.
So, another point to "South Park." Integrity concerns about prediction markets very much exist (as they still do with state-regulated sportsbooks), even as operators are working to address them.
KALSHI VOLUME REACHES ALL TIME HIGH AS THE PREDICTION MARKET HEADLINES RECENT SOUTH PARK EPISODE pic.twitter.com/FuNQAxj24G
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) September 25, 2025
"South Park" also put its finger on another concern about prediction markets, which is who regulates them and where the buck really stops.
At one point in the episode, a character upset with a certain betting market begins making calls to have it taken down. As they try to get that market taken down, the character keeps encountering the same guy, someone who looks like Donald Trump Jr., an advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket in real life.
Do I need to spell it out for you? I mean, the title of the episode is "Conflict of Interest."
The CFTC's commissioners are also appointed by the president (albeit with the advice and consent of the Senate), and the president right now is also named Trump. The CFTC during the Trump administration has taken a hands-off approach to prediction markets.
"The contracts are immediately effective unless and until the CFTC initiates review of any contract," a U.S. District Court judge in Maryland wrote in an August decision regarding sports event contracts.
That same decision added later that "Kalshi argues that 'the CFTC has already authorized Kalshi’s event contracts by declining to restrict them after Kalshi self-certified them.'"
So, if the CFTC and the Trump administration wanted all this predicting to stop, they very well could. Or they could at least slow it down. Whether they should or will is a different matter. Meanwhile, "South Park" highlighted all of this as only "South Park" can.
Yes, prediction markets are going mainstream. But that may also mean the concerns about them could go mainstream as well.
