Trump Ditches His Own Plan For Online Sports Betting Product
President Donald Trump’s media company is backing away from its plan to embed sports betting-style prediction markets into Truth Social, Axios reported Friday.
Trump Media & Technology Group is scaling back its planned “Truth Predict” product. Instead of building Crypto.com’s prediction markets into Truth Social, Trump Media now plans a marketing arrangement to promote Crypto.com’s products to its users.
Critics of prediction markets call so-called “sports event contracts” another form of gambling. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission controversially regulates these stock-market-style contracts, while states regulate house-banked sports betting.
Truth Social had an estimated 261,000 daily active mobile users in July, according to Similarweb data reported by the Financial Times.
Aborted Gambling Plans
The Truth Predict retreat comes less than a year after Trump Media announced plans to turn Truth Social into what it called the first publicly traded social-media platform with integrated prediction markets.
Under the October 2025 plan, Truth Social users would have been able to wager on politics, economic data, commodity prices and “events across all major sports leagues.”
Crypto.com’s derivatives business was supposed to supply the markets.
Trump Media said beta testing would begin shortly before a nationwide U.S. rollout. The product was branded Truth Predict.
That vision never made it to a full launch.
Sector Becomes Crowded
The most valuable prediction markets in the space are Kalshi and Polymarket, which both count Donald Trump Jr. as an advisor. They are among dozens of firms competing for a piece of federally regulated sports betting.
Trump Jr. also sits on Trump Media’s board.
Trump Media interim CEO Kevin McGurn told Axios that the prediction-market industry has become crowded enough that building the underlying infrastructure no longer looks like an attractive use of the company’s resources.
“We wanted to get focused,” McGurn said while discussing the company’s broader strategic retreat from several cryptocurrency-related ventures.
Instead, Trump Media now sees more opportunity in acting as a distributor and data provider rather than directly integrating the markets, according to Axios. The company could still funnel Truth Social users toward Crypto.com prediction markets under the contemplated marketing deal.
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