A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate yesterday would bring an end to the “but it’s not technically sports betting” excuse your spouse never believed. If passed, the legislation would ban prediction markets and part-time grocery store operators like Kalshi and Polymarket from offering contracts on sports and casino games, like blackjack, by closing a loophole.

What’s the loophole? Sportsbooks are regulated by state bodies. Prediction markets are monitored federally by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) because the action on events is considered a “swap,” not a bet. Much to the dismay of casinos, this has allowed prediction platforms to operate in all 50 states—including ones where sports betting is illegal. Some states have sued to block them from operating, with Nevada winning a temporary ban last week. The new bill would apply to all CFTC-regulated entities.

You gotta love sports

While prediction markets offer bets positions on when attacks might happen during a war, MrBeast’s marital status, and the temperature in Chicago, sports contracts are their big money drivers:

• Kalshi reported that 90% of its trading volume during the 2025 NFL season was on sports.
• Sports was the most traded category on Polymarket last year.
• Your bracket went bust this last week, but Kalshi and Polymarket didn’t: Thanks to the first four days of March Madness, Kalshi saw $2.67 billion in weekly sports trades between March 16–22 while Polymarket had $1.22 billion. That’s a weekly increase of 28% and 32%, respectively, per prediction market tracker DeFi Rate.

Despite reputational issues, the prediction business is having no trouble finding backers. Polymarket just became a licensing partner of MLB, the sports league embroiled in a gambling scandal, and Kalshi recently raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation, per Bloomberg. Probably not coincidentally, Polymarket and Kalshi announced new measures to curb insider trading yesterday.

A win for sportsbooks: Shares of traditional sportsbooks climbed yesterday on the news of the potential end of prediction markets as competitors, including FanDuel parent company Flutter (4.4%), DraftKings (1.2%), PENN Entertainment (5.6%), and MGM (4.5%).—DL

Trump delayed strikes on Iranian power plants after “constructive conversations.” Iran and the US had “productive” discussions about “a complete and total resolution of our hostilities,” the president said yesterday in an early morning Truth Social post, adding that he had instructed the military to postpone threatened strikes on Iran’s power plants as a result. Though Iran denied that talks were happening, President Trump told reporters that US envoys were speaking to a “respected” leader and that Iran was eager to end the war.

SCOTUS seems poised to leave late-arriving ballots uncounted. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared during oral arguments yesterday to favor striking down a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day, but received later, to be counted. At least 15 other states have similar laws, so the ruling could have a large impact on voting by mail—a practice President Trump dislikes. A decision is expected by June, which means it would govern vote counting in November’s midterm elections.

​​NYC airport closed temporarily after fatal crash. LaGuardia Airport was closed yesterday morning, reopening in the afternoon following a crash between an Air Canada Express plane and a fire truck Sunday night that killed both the plane’s pilots and injured several passengers and crew members. The collision happened just after the plane carrying 70 passengers landed as the fire truck was headed to inspect another plane. About 600 flights were canceled while the airport was closed, and delays are expected to continue through this morning.—AR

The secretive billionaire owner of OnlyFans, a platform that lets creators sell erotic content directly to users, Leonid Radvinsky, has died of cancer at age 43, the company shared yesterday.

After running online porn ventures ever since he was a teenager, Radvinsky in 2018 bought a majority stake in the British site OnlyFans, which he then steered to become one of the UK's top startups.

It’s credited with disrupting the notoriously exploitative porn industry by enabling adult video stars, sex workers, or anyone looking for a salacious side hustle to make explicit content independently. But…OnlyFans has also faced controversy over its own exploitative content and tried pivoting towards PG creators. The platform banned erotica in 2021 after pressure from banks processing its payments, but quickly reversed the decision in response to user backlash.

Porn powerhouse

The erotic marketplace connecting millions of creators with over 300 million users is a massively lucrative enterprise:

• Taking a 20% cut from creators’ proceeds yielded OnlyFans $7.2 billion in revenue for the 2024 financial year.
• The company paid Radvinsky hundreds of millions in dividends over the years, which the limelight-averse entrepreneur used to support philanthropic causes like cancer research.

Before his death, Radvinsky was in talks to sell a 60% stake in OnlyFans’ parent, in a deal that would’ve valued the company at $8 billion.—SK

If your Samsung smart refrigerator is running, you might be one of the many who want to let it go: A pilot program that introduced advertisements on some Samsung fridges has triggered fierce customer backlash, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

ICYMI: In October, banner ads for products like Tide detergent and Samsung water filters started appearing on the screens of some Samsung Family Hub fridges in the US, which typically cost $1,800+.

The catch: Owners can turn off the banner ads, but doing so also disables a screen widget that shows news, weather, and a calendar. They can’t disable third-party, full-screen ads that may show up on the appliance’s internet browser, which feels like karmic punishment for surfing the web on a fridge.

Almost every customer the WSJ interviewed was critical of the ad update: “I will never buy a Samsung appliance or device again, unless I absolutely need it,” one smart fridge owner told the publication.

Zoom out: Amid a broader “Screens Everywhere” campaign that includes washers, dryers, and ovens, Samsung said last April that it didn’t have plans at the time to put ads on its smart home screens. LG Electronics, Whirlpool, and GE have made similar statements, which they haven’t (yet) strayed from.—ML

We have good news for anyone who has ever rolled their eyes during an all hands while some higher-up prattled on about “blue-skying around synergizing cross-collateralization while maximizing growth-hack paradigms.” A recent study out of Cornell found that the workers who are most susceptible to “corporate bullshit” (yes, that is the precise academic term) are worse at their jobs:

• The study asked 1,000+ officer workers to assess the business savvy of statements, some of which were BS generated by a computer, and some of which came from real Fortune 500 leaders. It used their responses to create a “Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR).”
• After having the workers perform cognitive tests, the study found that those who were high on the CBSR saw their bosses as more charismatic and “visionary,” while they also scored much worse on a test of effective workplace decision-making, as well as lower on tests of analytic thinking and cognitive reflection.

That’s bad news for companies as it can lead to echo chambers. “Rather than a ‘rising tide lifting all boats,’ a higher level of corporate BS in an organization acts more like a clogged toilet of inefficiency,” the researcher who conducted the study explained.—AR