How Sports Betting Came For EVERYTHING

Want to bet on the U.S. invading Iran? Sure why not? You can do exactly that with prediction markets, the billionaire-backed platforms that gamble on the future while sucking your wallet dry. Francesca looks at the very recent rise of platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi which are now partnering with everything from awards shows to UFC fights, and even news outlets.

After sports betting was legalized in 2018, the online gambling model that has lured many Americans in is expanding. This time to politics, culture and current events. You can now bet on how many deportations there will be in a year, or if Kristi Noem will keep her job. It’s as dystopian as it sounds but it’s having real-life consequences. People are losing thousands of dollars on these betting schemes, which are dubiously legal. Polymarket already paid out a massive settlement to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in 2022 and is now facing a class-action lawsuit out of the Southern District of New York. 

But the platforms aren’t slowing down despite the legal hurdles. That’s in part thanks to Trump’s newly minted head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, who’s a former crypto lawyer, who wants to remove regulations. 

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour wants to ‘financialize everything’ and hopes prediction markets grow to be a trillion-dollar venture. The problem? They’re rife with corruption. Insider trading is everywhere in sports betting, and now that same cheating streak appears to be rearing its head in political betting as well. 

Beyond that, what does it mean when we stop being actors in the world around us and simply become gamblers? And what lengths could people go to to see their bets pay off? Black Mirror could never.

Thanks to Andy Vasoyan, Brent Godin and Paige Oamek.

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See Francesca LIVE Saturday February 14th at 9:30pm Pasadena for New World Disorder:

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Thanks to Paige Oamek, Andy Vasoyan & Brent Godin

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