Saahil Desai: “Prediction markets let you wager on basically anything. Will Elon Musk father another baby by June 30? Will Jesus return this year? Will Israel strike Gaza tomorrow? … These sites have recently boomed in popularity—particularly among terminally online young men who trade meme stocks and siphon from their 401(k)s to buy up bitcoin. But now prediction markets are creeping into the mainstream. CNN announced a deal with Kalshi last month to integrate the site’s data into its broadcasts, which has led to betting odds showing up in segments about Democrats possibly retaking the House, credit-card interest rates, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell …
“On January 7, the media giant Dow Jones announced its own collaboration with Polymarket and said that it will begin integrating the site’s odds across its publications, including T*he Wall Street Journal*. CNBC has a prediction-market deal, as does *Yahoo Finance*, *Sports Illustrated*, and *Time*. Last week, MoviePass announced that it will begin testing a betting platform. On Sunday, the Golden Globes featured Polymarket’s forecasts throughout the broadcast—because apparently Americans wanted to know whether online gamblers favored Amy Poehler or Dax Shepard to win Best Podcast.
“Media is a ruthless, unstable business, and revenue streams are drying up; if you squint, you can see why CNN or Dow Jones might sign a contract that, after all, provides its audience with some kind of data. On air, [Harry Enten, CNN’s network’s chief data analysis] cites Kalshi odds alongside Gallup polls and Google searches—what’s the difference? ‘The data featured through our partnership with Kalshi is just one of many sources used to provide context around the stories or topics we are covering and has no impact on editorial judgment,’ Brian Poliakoff, a CNN spokesperson, told me in a statement. Nolly Evans, the Journal’s digital general manager, told me that Polymarket provides the newspaper’s journalists with ‘another way to quantify collective expectations—especially around financial or geopolitical events’ …
“The problem is that prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes as much about gambling as about the event itself. This kind of thing has already happened to sports, where the language of ‘parlays’ and ‘covering the spread’ has infiltrated every inch of commentary. ESPN partners with DraftKings to bring its odds to SportsCenter and Monday Night Football; *CBS Sports* has a betting vertical; FanDuel runs its own streaming network. But the stakes of Greenland’s future are more consequential than the NFL playoffs.
“The more that prediction markets are treated like news, especially heading into another election, the more every dip and swing in the odds may end up wildly misleading people about what might happen, or influencing what happens in the real world.”
Dire news for sure, but hardly surprising. Dow Jones and the financial market have already created an entire economy underpinned by gambling via the stock market. Polymarket etc is not such a leap when you think of it in these terms.
The real race is for which tech company will be the first to discover how to microwave Draft King advertisements into your dreams.
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Saahil Desai: “Prediction markets let you wager on basically anything. Will Elon Musk father another baby by June 30? Will Jesus return this year? Will Israel strike Gaza tomorrow? … These sites have recently boomed in popularity—particularly among terminally online young men who trade meme stocks and siphon from their 401(k)s to buy up bitcoin. But now prediction markets are creeping into the mainstream. CNN announced a deal with Kalshi last month to integrate the site’s data into its broadcasts, which has led to betting odds showing up in segments about Democrats possibly retaking the House, credit-card interest rates, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell …
“On January 7, the media giant Dow Jones announced its own collaboration with Polymarket and said that it will begin integrating the site’s odds across its publications, including T*he Wall Street Journal*. CNBC has a prediction-market deal, as does *Yahoo Finance*, *Sports Illustrated*, and *Time*. Last week, MoviePass announced that it will begin testing a betting platform. On Sunday, the Golden Globes featured Polymarket’s forecasts throughout the broadcast—because apparently Americans wanted to know whether online gamblers favored Amy Poehler or Dax Shepard to win Best Podcast.
“Media is a ruthless, unstable business, and revenue streams are drying up; if you squint, you can see why CNN or Dow Jones might sign a contract that, after all, provides its audience with some kind of data. On air, [Harry Enten, CNN’s network’s chief data analysis] cites Kalshi odds alongside Gallup polls and Google searches—what’s the difference? ‘The data featured through our partnership with Kalshi is just one of many sources used to provide context around the stories or topics we are covering and has no impact on editorial judgment,’ Brian Poliakoff, a CNN spokesperson, told me in a statement. Nolly Evans, the Journal’s digital general manager, told me that Polymarket provides the newspaper’s journalists with ‘another way to quantify collective expectations—especially around financial or geopolitical events’ …
“The problem is that prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes as much about gambling as about the event itself. This kind of thing has already happened to sports, where the language of ‘parlays’ and ‘covering the spread’ has infiltrated every inch of commentary. ESPN partners with DraftKings to bring its odds to SportsCenter and Monday Night Football; *CBS Sports* has a betting vertical; FanDuel runs its own streaming network. But the stakes of Greenland’s future are more consequential than the NFL playoffs.
“The more that prediction markets are treated like news, especially heading into another election, the more every dip and swing in the odds may end up wildly misleading people about what might happen, or influencing what happens in the real world.”
Read more: [https://theatln.tc/4x5uVRnA](https://theatln.tc/4x5uVRnA)
Dire news for sure, but hardly surprising. Dow Jones and the financial market have already created an entire economy underpinned by gambling via the stock market. Polymarket etc is not such a leap when you think of it in these terms.
The real race is for which tech company will be the first to discover how to microwave Draft King advertisements into your dreams.