TradeSports will terminate itself on November 28, 2008.

A very sad day (which I am not glad to report that I predicted would happen). TradeSports is probably the latest victim of both the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 and the Louisiana prosecutors. It is also the victim of a lack of support from the prediction market luminaries. As for the pertinence of the InTrade-TradeSports splitting that was started in 2007, I leave this issue to the business historians.

InTrade (which does not float event derivatives on sports) is caught in the same regulatory net, but CEO John Delaney hopes that the CFTC could soon legalize event derivative exchanges &#8212-except those on sports. That is far from certain, though. And InTrade&#8217-s heyday is now over. See you in 2012, for the next presidential election.

The Sporting Exchange (which operates BetFair) is making a very different bet: the United States of America will one day legalize the betting exchanges and the trading on sports. That is a reasonable, long-term bet. But not all the Democratic legislators favor Internet gambling and betting &#8212-far from it. We will see.

The future is spelled &#8220-BetFair&#8221-, but many of my readers don&#8217-t like the way they display odds &#8212-Americans prefer probabilities.

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