Key Takeaways:
Lindh says the Sportradar–Kalshi deal shows the gambling industry’s anti-prediction front is cracking.He argues prediction market operators lack sportsbooks’ incentive to stop insider trading.Lindh sees Malta as the likely legal route into the EU, and operators rebranding as derivatives firms.“I don’t think it’s the right thing to save money on.”
‘The Most Difficult Point to Resolve’On insider trading, Lindh was unusually candid for someone building a business on the sector’s legitimacy. “This is going to be the sticking point and the most difficult point to resolve,” he said. Stock-market insider trading is “pretty ring-fenced” and traceable, but geopolitical event markets are not: before a country is attacked, “the soldiers are briefed,” and the information spreads outward. “I think it’s an impossible mission to close down the possibility of insider information,” he admitted.
The result is “a catch-22 for the operators,” Lindh said, and his verdict is bleak: “with the nature of the world being so chaotic as it is, it’s very, very hard to stop.”
The Road Into Europe – and Beyond Prediction MarketsFor Europe, Lindh sees one realistic doorway. Malta is “the only jurisdiction in Europe that is thinking of regulating this product as a financial derivative product,” a classification that could open the whole EU, and “all the big ones are exploring Malta as a potential jurisdiction of interest.” (Next.io hosted Polymarket at its Malta conference weeks earlier.)
For now, Lindh remains a user as much as an analyst. A Swede, he is “hoping that Sweden will win” the World Cup and admits he checks the markets constantly during matches – “a hundred times a day probably.” The rationale is more human than you might expect: “It’s always fun to play some trades.” For an industry still fighting over whether it is finance or gambling, that may be the most honest answer of all.
