Hollywood studios and production companies have been quietly issuing internal guidelines barring employees from betting on prediction markets, entertainment industry trade publication The Hollywood Reporter reported on Thursday.

The directives warn staff against wagering on events tied to confidential company information — including studio earnings, casting decisions and release dates — and also prohibit passing inside information to friends or family members so they can place bets instead. At least one company has reportedly gone a step further, setting up a hotline that lets employees anonymously report colleagues suspected of betting with insider knowledge.

The restrictions have even reached the press covering the industry. Penske Media, The Hollywood Reporter's parent company, updated its employee handbook in recent weeks to ban bets on "award nominations, casting decisions, production timelines and release dates," the outlet said.

The guidelines effectively extend long-standing insider trading prohibitions from the stock market to prediction market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Prediction markets let users buy and sell contracts that pay out based on whether real-world events occur, and current offerings range from which actor will be cast as the next James Bond to who gets voted off a reality show.

"You now have, essentially, an explosion in the number of employers who have to think about insider trading rules from an ethical standpoint," Joshua Mitts, a law professor at Columbia University who studies prediction markets, told the outlet.

Enforcement, however, may be another matter entirely. "With blockchain-based trading, it can be basically impossible if you know how to use a mixer correctly and know how to hide your identity behind multiple layers of intermediation," Mitts said.

Some operators are already on edge. Betting site BetOnline temporarily pulled its market on the next James Bond this week after a sudden wave of "sharp money" pushed actor Callum Turner above longtime favorite Jack Lowden, raising concerns about a possible leak, according to the report. For the companies drafting these policies, the episode illustrated the stakes: confidential information can now be reflected in publicly visible odds before any official announcement.

Insider trading on prediction markets

Entertainment insiders have been caught before. In February, Kalshi said a video editor at MrBeast's company had made about $5,000 by using confidential information to bet on MrBeast content; the employee was fired and fined $20,000.

Federal prosecutors have also brought cases over insider trading on prediction markets. In April, an active-duty U.S. soldier was charged with using classified information about the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro to place bets on Polymarket. In May, a Google engineer was charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering over Polymarket bets allegedly made with confidential company data. Both cases remain pending.

Governments have moved as well. California, New York and Illinois have banned state employees from using nonpublic information to bet on prediction markets, while the platforms have rolled out their own surveillance tools. Polymarket has investigated dozens of bets related to the U.S. midterm elections. The pending federal prosecutions, the platforms' surveillance tools and any further corporate handbook updates are the markers to watch as prediction markets broaden their entertainment offerings.

One type of entertainment bet is already off the table by law. Under the Onion Futures Act of 1958, U.S. statutes explicitly prohibit just two kinds of futures contracts: those on onions and those on movie box office receipts, The Hollywood Reporter noted.