Gil Thorp, 5/12/26

The Vegas sportsbooks have had a rough last few years. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association that states could set up their own regimes of regulated sports betting, and many did, leading to a flurry of betting apps available on every phone; then in early 2025, Kalshi, a "prediction market" that let users bet on any upcoming events and that claimed to be a futures market and thus regulated by the federal government, decided that betting on sporting events was just another kind of predicting and because they were under federal jurisdiction, they could offer sports betting everywhere, even in states that banned it. Still, I don't know if "betting on high school golf" is what's going to bail Vegas out on this one, though maybe they signed some kind of deal with the Valley Conference back when they were doing prison football, which you have to admit is more exciting.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/12/26