On 22 September the National Council on Problem Gambling said in writing what it had spent four months declining to say: the product its newest major donor sells is gambling. “Regardless of how prediction markets are currently legally defined, NCPG believes trading event contracts is functionally gambling and carry the potential for significant gambling-related harm, particularly as access, advertising, and participation continue to expand.”
Board president Derek Longmeier’s statement resolves a vocabulary problem. It does not resolve the funding arrangement the vocabulary was in tension with, and it does not bring back the three members who left over it.
What changed, and what did not
NCPG is the only national nonprofit devoted to reducing gambling harm, founded in 1972, and its stated position on legalization has always been neutrality — it takes no side on whether gambling should be legal, only on what it does to people. In May it announced a two-year, $2m investment from Kalshi into a new “trader health and safety” initiative, and a new membership subcategory, “Financial Services & Trading”, with Kalshi joining at the platinum level.
That was a difficult thing to hold in place while the states fought Kalshi in court. Three members decided they could not. The Ohio Casino Control Commission left by letter in June, disclosed only on 10 September when the Massachusetts Gaming Commission weighed the same step; Michigan’s Gaming Control Board followed in July; the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling, a state affiliate rather than a regulator, cut ties over the summer. Ohio’s letter gave the reason as plainly as a regulator can: the commission needed “to ensure that it is not associated with organizations that are affiliated with companies engaged in illegal gambling in Ohio”. Michigan’s executive director used nearly identical wording, and Nevada’s told the Nevada Current the difference was “fundamental” about “how we believe a problem gambling organization should respond to emerging gambling risks”.
The 22 September statement answers that charge on the council’s own terms. It separates legality from harm: NCPG “exists not to litigate whether prediction markets or other emerging activities meet a legal definition of gambling, but to prevent and reduce gambling-related harm wherever it occurs”. It is “neutral on whether prediction markets should be legal”, and “not neutral on the need to prevent and reduce gambling-related harm wherever it occurs”.
The funding model, named in the same document
What makes the statement worth reading is that it defends the money in the same breath as it names the product. In the full text, NCPG notes it is “donor-supported” and “fully auditable”, that it receives no federal funding, and that “many of our members and donors are gambling operators”. The separation is asserted rather than structural: “Donor engagement does not mean endorsement. Membership, funding or collaboration does not give any person or organization control over NCPG’s research, advocacy, policy positions, or public statements.”
This is the third statement NCPG has issued about the Kalshi arrangement. The first, in June, announced the category as a way to study emerging risks. The second, titled “Membership and Donations Do Not Equal Endorsement”, answered a member’s question with a bolded “The answer is no”. The third, two months later, arrives after the exits and after the Massachusetts chair told the council it was “on notice”: “We’re not going to change just because somebody’s taking money from one of these prediction market companies.”
The statement also leans on public opinion — a Harris Poll commissioned by NCPG found 85% of Americans agree people can develop unhealthy or addictive behaviors related to prediction-market platforms and 84% think they should be treated like gambling for consumer-protection purposes. It is an interested party’s poll, and it is doing the work that a regulator’s finding would do if any regulator had issued one.
What the council loses when a regulator leaves
NCPG’s leverage in this argument is convening power. State commissions hold the complaint data, the self-exclusion lists and the enforcement records; the national council is where those agencies compare notes and set standards. A national body that keeps the operators and loses the regulators ends up convening the side of the conversation that has a commercial interest in the answer.
The cost lands where it always lands. NCPG’s own numbers say the harm is real and treatment capacity is thin; the helpline it runs, 1-800-MY-RESET, and the state prevention programs that depend on regulator credibility have nothing to gain from a fight about whether event contracts are gambling. If they are, then a national harm-prevention organization is taking $2m from a gambling operator while asking it to fund the study of its own product. If they are not, then Ohio, Michigan and Nevada are regulating a product that does not legally exist.
NCPG has now chosen the first reading publicly. The donation, the membership, and the states that left are all unchanged by the choice.