Last November, the Citadel Securities Conference had a panel hosted by Kalshi — a self-proclaimed “marketplace of ideas.” One particular moment during the interview, featuring CEO Tarek Mansour and co-founder Luana Lopes Lara, generated significant media attention.
“The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion,” Mansour said.
Kalshi and the similar platform Polymarket fashion themselves as “prediction markets,” which act as hosts for users to bet on anything — Kalshi, for example, has markets for the highest temperatures in New York City or Miami on a given day. However, despite the breadth of possible wagers, bets on sports markets account for 90 percent of Kalshi’s volume during the peak of football season. For all the talk of being a “marketplace of ideas,” the activity on these prediction markets seems to indicate more similarity to a diversified and deregulated version of DraftKings or FanDuel than the stock market.
An understanding of Kalshi and Polymarket as deregulated sportsbooks is important because of the specific bets these platforms allow users to make. In December 2025, Kalshi made federal regulators aware that it “self-certified” itself to host markets trading on student-athlete transfer portal decisions — allowing them to proceed in this endeavor is untenable, as it would add to the already-present risks sports betting poses to both student-athletes and the integrity of college sports.
These markets’ potential impacts on college sports is undeniable if only for the transfer portal’s growing centrality to college athletics. It is worth noting the particular effect transfer wagers could have on Virginia, as Virginia Athletics is heavily reliant on the transfer portal to fill out its rosters, particularly in flagship programs.
The 2025 Cavalier football squad, which broke the school record for wins in a season, was built on a roster including over 30 transfers, a number which appears set to repeat for the 2026 roster. Virginia basketball, who advanced to the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament before losing to Tennessee, filled seven of its 15 roster spots with transfers during the last portal cycle.
The NCAA and outside observers have already seen sports betting in college athletics’ effects on student-athletes — unregulated markets based not just upon their play, but their personal decisions concerning their futures would exacerbate these dangers in the transfer portal and NIL era.
The first impact of sports betting which transfer markets could exacerbate comes in the form of negative reactions from gamblers after losing their wagers — a 2025 NCAA study found that one-third of Division I men’s basketball players experienced social media harassment from disgruntled sports bettors. There is high potential here for threats and abuse against athletes because a 19-year-old made a decision about their future that caused bettors to lose their wagers.
The second impact does not just affect athletes, but the very integrity of college sports. This past January saw charges brought by a U.S. district attorney against a network of persons alleged to have participated in a point-shaving scheme which involved more than 39 NCAA Division I basketball players and 17 different programs.
Point-shaving in sports, in essence, is a form of insider trading — the logical leap here, in regards to the consequences of allowing Kalshi to offer wagers on transfer decisions, is more of a hop than a leap. Just as a player can intentionally score underneath their betting line for points, a student-athlete could inform others of an unexpected transfer decision prior to an official announcement, creating an unfair market advantage.
While Kalshi has not yet taken further steps to offer transfer markets, the fact that they have made any movement — in the form of self-certification — towards it was notable enough for NCAA president Charlie Baker to comment on the matter.
“It is already bad enough that student-athletes face harassment and abuse for lost bets on game performance, and now Kalshi wants to offer bets on their transfer decisions and status,” Baker said on X. “This is absolutely unacceptable and would place even greater pressure on student-athletes while threatening competition integrity and recruiting processes.”
Baker sent an official petition to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in January, urging the independent federal regulator to suspend all “collegiate sport prediction markets” indefinitely. Included in the petition was a request for the prohibition of college player props from betting platforms at a state level — this essentially would prevent bettors from placing wagers on outcomes specific to individual athletes, a move which could preclude Kalshi from offering markets on transfer portal decisions. The majority of states already have steps similar to this, providing potential regulative authority against transfer markets and at least some mitigation of that aspect of the larger predictive market problem.
Legal opposition to prediction markets has grown across the country as of late — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed charges March 17 against Kalshi for 20 different wagers. The bets in the indictment ranged from the winner of a game between the Washington Commanders and the Detroit Lions to whether Republicans or Democrats would win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the upcoming 2026 elections.
The rise of sports betting has already done enough damage to the world of college athletics. Allowing platforms like Kalshi to establish transfer portal markets and other opportunities to wager on individual athletes, would only serve to exacerbate these already-substantial issues.
Although the Arizona misdemeanor charges represent a slap on the wrist, legal action and legislation like these are necessary to mitigate the challenges unregulated prediction markets present. Additional legislative or state-level action can lay the foundation for more reform in the future — any increase in governing authority over prediction markets, at any level, lays a brick on a protective wall around student-athletes and the integrity of college sports.
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