Hollywood’s prediction-market crackdown turns the casting couch into a compliance desk

Hollywood studios and production companies are quietly telling employees not to bet on prediction markets or share confidential information with friends and family who might do so, The Hollywood Reporter reported on Thursday. The guidelines cover events including studio earnings, casting decisions and release dates, with at least one company establishing a hotline for anonymously reporting suspected offenders. Penske Media, the parent company of The Hollywood Reporter, has also updated its employee handbook in recent weeks to ban bets on “award nominations, casting decisions, production timelines and release dates.”

The policies extend existing insider-trading restrictions from traditional stock markets to platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which accept wagers on questions ranging from the next James Bond to reality-show voting. Joshua Mitts, a Columbia University law professor who studies prediction markets, told the outlet that the growth of prediction markets has created “an explosion in the number of employers who have to think about insider trading rules from an ethical standpoint.”

Enforcement remains difficult. “With blockchain-based trading, it can be basically impossible if you know how to use a mixer correctly and know how to hide your identity behind multiple layers of intermediation,” Mitts said. BetOnline temporarily withdrew its next-James-Bond market after a wave of “sharp money” pushed Callum Turner above longtime favorite Jack Lowden, prompting concerns about a leak.

Prediction-market insiders have already faced consequences. In February, Kalshi said a video editor at MrBeast’s company made about $5,000 using confidential information to bet on MrBeast content; the editor was fired and fined $20,000. Federal prosecutors have also charged an active-duty U.S. soldier with using classified information about the raid to capture Nicolás Maduro to bet on Polymarket, while a Google engineer was charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering over Polymarket bets allegedly placed with confidential company data. Both cases are pending. Beast Industries, the firm behind MrBeast’s media and consumer-goods business, separately fired video editor Artem Kaptur following an internal investigation and notified employees of his termination by email.