Mormon leader decries explosion in sports betting, prediction markets

SALT LAKE CITY -- A leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints warned Saturday that an explosion in gambling driven by online prediction markets and sports betting is fostering greed, particularly among youths, while producing “nothing of value.”

D. Todd Christofferson, one of the top three leaders of what is known widely as the Mormon church, said rampant betting among teenagers and young adults is robbing time from their studies and relationships as smartphones make gambling possible anywhere.

“For us as Latter-day Saints, overarching all other concerns is the fact that gambling is morally wrong. Gambling is built on the desire to obtain something for nothing,” Christofferson said at the faith’s twice-annual general conference.

The declaration that prediction markets are gambling puts the conservative church at odds with President Donald Trump. The Republican's administration has argued platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket don’t constitute gambling and therefore shouldn’t be subjected to restrictions in states such as Utah, where the church is based.

Utah has been at the forefront of the legal dispute over who regulates the markets and whether they should be considered finance or gambling. A federal judge ruled in August that Utah officials can enforce its strict-anti-gambling laws on prediction markets.

Legislation was enacted this year to make Utah’s gambling laws stricter and amend some of the language so that they’d almost certainly apply to prediction markets.

Prediction markets allow wagers on anything from whether it will rain in Los Angeles, to if the United States will go to war.

“Or even, if you can imagine, the timing of the Second Coming,” Christofferson said Saturday. “Where do you go to collect on that bet?”

Opposition to gambling is common among religious organizations. The United Methodist Church refers to it as “a menace to society.” The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, has condemned gambling several times and in 2025 declared sports gambling inconsistent with biblical principle.

Gambling is forbidden in Islam and considered a vice among Hindus. In the Catholic Church, gambling is not in itself a sin, but is considered potentially problematic.

For more than a century, Utah kept gambling almost entirely out of the state. There are no casinos, no lotteries and no racetracks that allow bets. The prohibition is rooted in the ideals of members of the Latter-day Saints church who view gambling as a path to selfishness and addiction.

“The rise of predictive markets, and the legalization of sports gambling, this is just really taking off all across the country,” said Matthew Bowman, a professor of religion and history at Claremont Graduate University in California. “And a lot of institutions — religious, state and otherwise — are grappling with this problem.”

Saturday’s speech comes as the church has been wading into political issues under President Dallin Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice who became the faith’s top leader last October. Church leaders this year have opposed state ballot measures that would establish rights to abortion in Idaho and Nevada.

Yet the institution's approach to political issues — using public statements and behind-the-scenes lobbying to convey its message — has become more calculated in recent years, Bowman said.

The shift followed public blowback to the church’s stance against California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that sought to ban gay marriage. In that case, Bowman said church leaders encouraged its members to get directly involved.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Holly Meyer contributed to this story from Nashville, Tennessee.