Kalshi demands Netflix pull trailer over Nevada betting claim

Prediction market Kalshi sent Netflix a cease-and-desist letter on Friday, demanding the streaming service pull the trailer for an upcoming documentary. Kalshi’s letter calls the trailer “defamatory” and says it contains “both fabricated documents and false and misleading statements.”

The documentary, “Instadocs: The Prediction Games,” covers the rise of prediction markets and is part of Netflix’s “Instadoc” series of fast-turnaround films. According to Netflix, it includes interviews with Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour. The trailer, though, centers on a different scene: a recent party in Las Vegas where men who made millions of dollars on prediction markets — probably eight figures — over the course of the World Cup gathered to watch the final. One guest is shown declaring his fondness for betting on Kalshi, while another displays what appears to be a $5,000 bet on his phone.

That’s the crux of Kalshi’s objection. The company is currently banned from operating in Nevada under a court order, and its cease-and-desist letter says the bet shown on the phone is actually a screenshot from May 16, 2025 — well before the ban took effect. Kalshi argues the trailer misleads viewers into believing that person was able to successfully trade sport-event contracts in Nevada as of July 19, 2026. The company also said it had already raised the issue with a Netflix employee, who agreed not to feature the screenshot in the documentary itself, set to release Sunday, July 26 — but that Netflix refused to remove it from the trailer already circulating on the app’s homepage, despite what Kalshi called clear proof the claim was false.

Netflix doesn’t dispute that the screenshot is from 2025, but a spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter that none of the documentary’s footage was fabricated. “The footage was filmed at the Winible World Cup Watch Weekend in Las Vegas on July 17, 2026,” the spokesperson said. “The featured trader with the trade on Spain showed us a screenshot of his bet, that was made in May 2025 prior to any Nevada court order. Any specific trades or bets referenced during that weekend are between the individual and the app in which they placed the trades.”

Why it matters

The clash shows how prediction-market platforms’ legal fights are now spilling into their own marketing and media coverage, and it raises the bar for documentary filmmakers who lean on real, user-shown betting activity as proof of a subject’s scale.