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In March, Polymarket opened The Situation Room, a pop-up “newsbar” in Washington, DC. The bar and lounge’s televisions played various content related to prediction markets, like Bloomberg Terminals, cable news, and live social media feeds that were “dedicated to monitoring the situation.”
A month earlier, Polymarket opened a free grocery store in New York City. The promotion ran Feb. 12-16, with shoppers allowed to gather up to $50 per person in free groceries.
More recently, Polymarket has paid top dollar for prominent athletes and celebrities to promote its prediction market. The company’s paid partners include LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Spike Lee, and Craig Robinson.
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Neither company has announced plans to seek an online betting licence in North Africa. The deal nevertheless highlights the divide in Morocco’s gambling market.
Land-based gambling can attract international investment. Cirsa expanded its Marrakech presence last November. Private online betting has no equivalent licensing route.
Cirsa’s own IPO prospectus is blunt about it: “Online gaming only exists for betting, which is operated by a state agency,” it says of Morocco, adding that online casino games “are not allowed”.
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That is because trading on prediction markets is illegal down under, according to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, the nation’s regulator on financial services. Last month, in perhaps the ASIC’s strongest warnings yet against the asset class, the commission reiterated that prediction markets are not licensed as financial markets to operate in Australia. Through the guidance, the regulator urged consumers to exercise caution before partaking in certain investments on offshore platforms which have not obtained licensing nationwide.
The advisory could be music to the ears of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose league has pushed a federal derivatives regulator in the US to enact more rigorous standards to help protect the integrity of professional sports. Ahead of the matchup, Goodell spoke with CNBC from Melbourne.
“We think there needs to be stronger regulations into the predictive markets,” he said. “We want to see that to protect the integrity of our game – we want to make sure we are protecting the consumers that are on those platforms.”