A lot of people are pretty puritanical about gambling in general. I think prediction markets just push themselves harder and have an air of tech bro douchebaggery about them, so that's why they are currently getting most of the hate.

From the linked survey results:

Percent who say they "frequently" or "sometimes" engage in:

online sports betting: 23%

prediction markets: 14%

Not a huge difference. I would say the two things are not materially different in popularity (in this one survey).

The article (which I agree is a bit crappy) even goes out of its way to mention the two things separately in the sentence "For someone to win in a prediction market or sports bet, someone else has to lose." They are different things, but they are both zero-sum, which is the point of the article. So the two things are not really different in principle, either.

I can't really grasp what your point is or how you can criticize the article for not being unsupported by the link, and then misrepresent the contents of the link.