A US comedy column uses two recent gambling scandals to argue that prediction markets and betting apps have become deeply embedded in American life, often skirting or breaking the rules. Former congressman George Santos was banned by prediction platform Kalshi and ordered to repay winnings after betting he would skip the State of the Union and then deliberately not attending, while sports commentator Bill Simmons admitted on his podcast to having his daughter's boyfriend place bets for him via FanDuel from Massachusetts, where such betting is legal, because he lives in California, where it is not.

Santos won more than $17,000 from his bet but must forfeit it and pay over $80,000 in combined fines to Kalshi and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for what was treated as a form of insider trading. Simmons' scheme, using someone else's login from a state with legal sports betting, may have breached FanDuel's terms and Massachusetts Gaming Commission rules, risking fines or a betting ban; he says he was unaware proxy betting was illegal there. The writer frames both cases as evidence of how normalised and legally fragmented gambling and prediction markets have become in the US, contrasting this with his own strict, gambling-averse upbringing.