Hollywood studios and production companies have been quietly restricting employee betting on prediction markets, according to a report by The Hollywood Reporter cited by Decrypt. The policies highlight a risk behind entertainment betting: some participants may know an outcome before the wider market does.
Source publication time: November 6, 2026, at 01:31:10 UTC+08:00. The developments below reflect that report’s time frame.
What the reported restrictions cover
According to the report, employees are being prohibited from betting on studio earnings, casting decisions and release dates, as well as passing confidential information to friends or relatives so they can place bets instead. At least one company reportedly established an anonymous hotline for staff to report suspected betting by colleagues.
Penske Media, The Hollywood Reporter’s parent company, also updated its employee handbook in the weeks before the report to prohibit bets on “award nominations, casting decisions, production timelines and release dates.”
The policies extend longstanding workplace restrictions on stock-market insider trading to prediction platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Their markets can cover entertainment outcomes ranging from the next James Bond casting to reality-show eliminations.
Suspicious betting is not proof of a leak
The report described one market disruption: BetOnline temporarily pulled its next-James-Bond market during the week of publication after a sudden influx of “sharp money” pushed Callum Turner ahead of longtime favorite Jack Lowden. The activity raised concerns about a leak; the report did not establish that a leak had occurred.
Joshua Mitts, a Columbia University law professor who studies prediction markets, told The Hollywood Reporter that a growing number of employers now have to consider insider-trading rules from an ethical standpoint. He also cautioned that enforcement can be difficult on blockchain-based platforms when traders use mixers and multiple layers of intermediation to conceal their identities.
The distinction matters: an employer can prohibit information-based betting without necessarily being able to identify every breach. An unusual price move, meanwhile, does not by itself establish misconduct.
Documented discipline and pending charges
The source cited several earlier incidents, with different evidentiary and legal statuses:
- MrBeast company employee: In February, Kalshi said a video editor at MrBeast’s company had used confidential information to make about $5,000 betting on MrBeast content. The employee was fired and fined $20,000.
- U.S. soldier: In April, an active-duty soldier was charged with using classified information about the raid to capture Nicolás Maduro to bet on Polymarket.
- Google engineer: In May, a Google engineer was charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering over Polymarket bets allegedly made using confidential company information.
Both criminal cases remained pending at the time of the report. Charges are allegations, not findings of guilt.
California, New York and Illinois had also banned state employees from using nonpublic information to bet on prediction markets. Platforms had introduced surveillance tools, and Polymarket had investigated dozens of bets on the U.S. midterm elections. Those investigations should not be treated as proof that every scrutinized bet involved wrongdoing.
A limit on entertainment-market expansion
Not every entertainment outcome is available for lawful U.S. futures trading. As The Hollywood Reporter noted, the Onion Futures Act of 1958 explicitly bans futures contracts on two categories: onions and movie box office receipts.
The broader issue in the report is information asymmetry, not proof that all entertainment betting is compromised. The reported workplace bans address who can use privileged access; the enforcement challenge is determining when that access has actually been used.