Hollywood Studios Quietly Bar Staff From Betting on Prediction Markets
Hollywood studios and production companies have quietly told employees not to bet on prediction markets, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The new guidelines cover betting on company news, including studio earnings, casting and release dates.
Prediction markets are online platforms where people trade contracts on whether something will happen. The price of a contract is read as a rough measure of how likely people think the outcome is. That makes a wager on who gets a role, or when a film opens, look a lot like a stock trade.
The guidelines also forbid staff from passing information to friends and family so they can place bets. At least one company has set up a hotline where colleagues can anonymously report a co-worker they suspect of betting.
The Hollywood Reporter's parent company, PMC, updated its employee handbook in recent weeks. The ban covers award nominations, casting decisions, production timelines and release dates, the same report says.
Why the sudden caution? The trade has a few recent examples. In February, the prediction market Kalshi disclosed that a video editor working for MrBeast's company had made $5,000 by using confidential information to bet on MrBeast content. The editor was fired and given a $20,000 penalty. In April, a Puck column revealed that someone who worked on a CBS competition show had been making money through prediction markets.
The James Bond casting has given the issue a public face. BetOnline temporarily pulled its page taking wagers on who would be cast as the next 007, after final auditions were expected to have taken place. The site said sharp money had surged toward Callum Turner over longtime favourite Jack Lowden, which raised concern about a credible leak. BetOnline has not said who, if anyone, was behind that money.
A March study by Joshua Mitts and Moran Ofir estimated $143 million in what it called anomalous profit on Polymarket, another prediction platform. Kalshi and Polymarket argue that their markets are fundamentally different from traditional gambling, a point set out in a Stanford Law explainer.
Lawmakers have been weighing the question too. Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis introduced bipartisan legislation on March 30 to ban sports prediction market contracts. On July 23, Representatives Susie Horsford and Mark Amodei introduced a bipartisan bill with a similar aim, according to a press release from Horsford's office. In May, NPR reported that the House had held off on a prediction-market ban despite calls for one from both parties.
For now, the studio rules are internal policy, not law. They apply to staff at the companies that wrote them, and they set out what those employees may and may not do with the news they hear at work.
