Prediction markets sit between gambling and financial trading, but the same question increasingly applies to other high-engagement digital products, such as videogames, social media, pornography, crypto trading and more. While the gambling sector is often heavily scrutinised, it has developed an advanced set of consumer protections that many other digital industries still lack. If prediction markets can generate gambling-like harms, should protection standards be based on behavioural risk rather than legal classification?
· Are prediction market operators reluctant to adopt safer gambling-style tools because of cost and commercial impact, or because doing so may make the product look too much like gambling?
· Should protections be based on the behavioural risk of a product, rather than its legal category?
· Are consumers more vulnerable when a product is framed as trading, entertainment, gaming, or lifestyle rather than gambling?
· What can prediction markets learn from safer gambling tools such as limits, self-exclusion, time-outs, risk detection algorithms and support signposting?
· How do we protect consumers without stifling innovation or over-regulating lower-risk activity?