Kalshi draws backlash over Jackie Robinson prediction market ad

Kalshi faces backlash for an America 250 advertising campaign that asks users to imagine betting on whether Major League Baseball would end racial segregation. Veteran journalist Hazel Trice Edney accused the prediction market company of turning Jackie Robinson's struggle into a gambling line in an op-ed that the New Pittsburgh Courier published July 10. "Kalshi asks us to imagine a world in which the question, 'Will Black men be treated as human beings?' was simply a gaming line you could bet on," Edney wrote. Kalshi's campaign presents major moments in American history as hypothetical prediction markets. One installment asks, "Will Baseball End Segregation?" and assigns the outcome a 0% chance in 1946. The ad then moves to 1947, when Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke Major League Baseball's color barrier. Kalshi says the market "settled" after his debut. The installment also includes a quote from Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller questioning Robinson's ability to play in the major leagues and an illustration of young Black men sitting on a stoop as one tosses a baseball into the air. Edney called the campaign insulting because it frames segregation and Robinson's treatment as potential sources of gambling profit. "This is not a celebration of history," she wrote. "It belittles both our suffering and our achievements." Robinson endured death threats, racial slurs, physical attacks, and discrimination at hotels and restaurants after he joined the Dodgers. Edney also pointed to Negro League players who never reached the majors because baseball owners kept the color barrier in place through most or all of their careers. "History did not 'settle' in 1947," Edney wrote. "It shifted painfully and left a great many people uncompensated on the losing side of a market they never chose to enter." Kalshi founder Luana Lopes Lara called the America 250 project her "favorite campaign," according to Edney's column. Kalshi allows users to buy contracts tied to elections, sporting events, economic reports, and other outcomes. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulates the exchange, but several states have challenged its sports-related contracts. Edney said she does not oppose Kalshi's business model. She objects to using a civil rights struggle to promote it, and acting as if segregation in Major League Baseball ended in 1947. "The trouble with Ms. Lopes Lara's 'favorite campaign' is not simply that it is offensive, though it is," Edney wrote. "It is that it reveals a worldview in which nothing is sacred enough to be exempt from the wager." The ad also received criticism on X. A woman named Catherine Tinker wrote, "i am a single issue voter and the issue is nuking prediction markets." A user named Iris added, "bleak doesn't even begin to describe it." Freelance sports writer Ben Pfeifer posted, "we just cannot continue as a society with this kind of stuff out in the wild and nothing being done about it."