Hollywood Studios Bar Staff From Betting on Kalshi and Polymarket Using Casting and Release-Date Knowledge

Hollywood studios and production companies have begun telling employees not to bet on prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket using what they know about casting, release dates and studio earnings, according to a Hollywood Reporter exclusive dated 5 November. The companies are unnamed, but Penske Media Corporation (PMC), the parent of The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Deadline, has updated its own employee handbook to bar bets on "award nominations, casting decisions, production timelines and release dates."

The move matters because it turns a trading-floor concept, insider trading, into an entertainment-industry compliance problem. Prediction markets let users buy and sell contracts on real-world outcomes, and they have expanded into questions that only a small circle of people can answer before the public does: who will be the next James Bond, who will appear in the still-unannounced full cast of *Avengers: Doomsday*, who will win season 35 of *Dancing With The Stars*. Those are the examples A.V. Club cited from the Hollywood Reporter's account.

What do the new guidelines say?

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the guidelines prohibit betting on news events tied to an employee's work, including studio earnings, casting and release dates. They also forbid passing confidential information to friends or family so that those people can place the wager instead. At least one company has set up an anonymous hotline for reporting colleagues suspected of betting.

OddsTrader stressed that these are company policies, not government rules or an industry-wide ban: each firm is writing its own, because it does not want staff using confidential workplace information to gain an advantage over other traders.

No studio has been named as the author of a specific policy, and the reporting rests on internal guidelines described to the Hollywood Reporter rather than on published statements. Their scope cannot be verified company by company.

What prompted the crackdown?

Several episodes preceded the guidelines. In February, Kalshi disclosed that a video editor for MrBeast's company had used confidential information to profit on bets about the creator's content. The two accounts of the case differ on the numbers. The Hollywood Reporter, as republished by Yahoo, said the editor made $5,000, was fired and was hit with a $20,000 penalty. OddsTrader, citing Kalshi's disciplinary notice, said the editor placed about $4,000 in trades, received a two-year trading suspension and owed $20,397.58, made up of more than $5,300 in recovered profits and a $15,000 penalty. Both agree that Kalshi found the trades relied on material nonpublic information.

The James Bond market offered a second example. The Hollywood Reporter reported that the betting site BetOnline temporarily pulled its market on the next Bond actor after "sharp money" moved toward Callum Turner and pushed him above the longtime favourite, Jack Lowden, because the site feared a credible leak. OddsTrader adds a caution that unusual betting activity does not necessarily prove inside information, since odds can shift for speculative or analytical reasons. CoinCodex reports that Kalshi introduced measures against insider trading in June, including requiring employer information from users in certain markets, and said it had opened 150 investigations into alleged insider trading.

The Hollywood Reporter also pointed to an April column in the outlet Puck about a worker on a CBS competition show who had been profiting through prediction markets. A TV network source told the Hollywood Reporter that the company's insider trading policy bans betting on related prediction markets but that insider bets remain "rampant."

Why is enforcement hard?

Catching a violator is the central difficulty. The Hollywood Reporter quoted Joshua Mitts, a Columbia University law professor, saying it "can be basically impossible" to catch a bettor who uses a mixer and layered intermediaries on blockchain platforms. CoinCodex made the related point that blockchain-based platforms can allow users to trade through pseudonymous cryptocurrency wallets, which makes it hard to link a particular wager to an individual employee. A.V. Club quoted the Hollywood Reporter's own wording that "connecting an employee to a particular bet can be tricky."

There are also gaps in who counts as an insider. According to the Hollywood Reporter, some pretaped shows have public audiences who could legally bet on outcomes they watched being filmed, and they would not be industry insiders.

Mitts said employers now face "an explosion in the number of employers who have to think about insider trading rules," and described the practical challenge as "the compliance problem", meaning educating employees on what is allowed. He also argued there is "very little social utility to having this priced correctly" in entertainment markets, and suggested that these markets "might be good candidates" for regulatory scrutiny.

Where do regulators stand?

The Hollywood Reporter said the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates prediction markets in the United States, sought public comment in the summer on which event contracts should be legal. According to the report, the agency indicated that betting on award shows such as the Oscars and Emmys should be allowed because "it is a contest, not gaming," while it was less certain about game shows, reality competitions and pageants.

The same report noted that the Onion Futures Act of 1958 explicitly outlaws onion futures and motion picture box office receipts as prediction market bets, which leaves other entertainment bets untouched. In other words, a bet on a film's weekend gross is barred by statute, while a bet on its casting is not.

Prediction market operators have courted entertainment: the A.V. Club noted that Grammys host Trevor Noah joked about betting on Polymarket himself and that Timothee Chalamet starred in a Kalshi commercial campaign over the summer.

What we don't know yet

Several material points remain unconfirmed. The companies issuing the guidelines have not been identified, no studio has publicly confirmed its policy, and none of the sources reports a disciplinary case in the film or television business arising from the new rules.

The outcome will depend on two things outside Hollywood's control: whether the CFTC narrows or widens the entertainment contracts it allows, and whether the exchanges themselves tighten verification. Kalshi has already said its employer-information requirement applies only to markets with heightened insider or manipulation risk. If the platforms and the regulator do not close the traceability gap, the studios' handbooks may prove easier to write than to enforce.