What does it mean when everything is a gamble? This is a question the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI), formally established under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, needs to consider.
The pandemic era changed gambling. With in-person gambling restricted, online gambling grew. During that time, levels of traditional sports betting also decreased, because little sport was happening, and the use of online casino-style games and other kinds of betting expanded. Today, one of the liveliest novel arenas for betting is prediction markets – including the platforms Polymarket, founded during the pandemic in 2020, and Kalshi.
These markets operate through “event contracts”. Polymarket uses cryptocurrency. On Kalshi, which is limited to US residents, you can bet regular currency. This means a person betting buys a share in the outcome of an event. A user can also sell a bet as it’s ongoing, and as the value of the prediction goes up and down, as though it were a stock.
Offering the opportunity, as Kalshi puts it, to “trade on anything”, the menu of things to gamble on is virtually limitless. Current Kalshi markets include whether Elon Musk will purchase Ryanair. Will the Rotten Tomatoes score for the new blockbuster Project Hail Mary be above 94? Who will win the 23rd season of Top Chef? You can bet on the highest or lowest temperature in a city on a given day, or on how many barrels will be released by the US’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve by April 1st. The trading volume on whether the US will confirm the existence of aliens by 2027 is $12.5 million.
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Currently on Polymarket, you can also buy a “yes” or “no” share in the hypothetical event of US forces entering Iran by March 31st at 23c, or by December 31st at 69c. These prices correlate to the predicted percentage chance. It’s not the platform setting the odds, as it were, but the crowd. Users are also encouraged to suggest ideas for new markets. As a byproduct of this mass-betting, prediction market platforms also claim that the wagers coalesce to become accurate forecasts of the outcome of events themselves.
In 2024, Kalshi won a lawsuit effectively regulating a US election-betting market. Last summer, Polymarket bought a holding company that allowed it to seek regulatory approval in the US, and is making its way back, although in a context of multiple disputes with various states. Donald Trump jnr’s venture capital firm is an investor in Polymarket, and last year he was announced as an adviser to Kalshi. The Trump family-owned social media platform Truth Social announced last year it would launch its own predictive gambling platform, Truth Predict.
Last week, Polymarket announced it was opening a bar in Washington DC called The Situation Room. “Imagine a sports bar,” Polymarket posted on social media, “but for situation monitoring – live X feeds, flight radar, Bloomberg terminals, and Polymarket screens.” I’d rather not imagine that, but soon residents of America’s capital won’t have to.
Betting on elections and matches is one thing. Betting on war is another, far more ethically dubious one. You can bet on whether Ukraine will re-enter certain areas of the country by March 31st; the date by which Ukraine may strike a tanker in the Black Sea; whether Ukraine will recapture Crimean territory by June 30th, or whether Russia will capture specific areas by specific dates. If you’re feeling especially cheery, you can even bet on the prospect of a nuclear test by Russia by the end of the month. Ukraine banned Polymarket last December.
Although blocked in the United Kingdom, Polymarket is not blocked in Ireland. At the time of writing, there was a trading volume of $125,000 on the Dublin-Central by-election, of which close to $80,000 related to Gillian Sherratt, who didn’t secure the Sinn Féin nomination.
‘What does all of this say about our times? It certainly feels linked to a culture of people looking for cheat codes to wealth, dovetailing with crypto-culture and trading apps’
While many people will be familiar with the frustration expressed by gamblers when a particular horse they’ve backed doesn’t win, the more bets there are on more things, the more that frustration can spread. Recently, an Israeli journalist received threatening messages when his report on a “minor missile strike” near Jerusalem became an object of ire, rooted in a bet on whether Iran would strike Israel on March 10th. The journalist faced pressure – apparently from those who had bet against a direct strike occurring on that day – to change his story to describe missile fragments landing post-interception, rather than an actual missile strike.
What does all of this say about our times? It certainly feels linked to a culture of people looking for cheat codes to wealth, dovetailing with crypto-culture and trading apps. It is a product of a time when everything imaginable can be monetised. But some of the more-grim markets also feel thematic of a general detachment and emotional numbness when it comes to global conflict. At what point does turning deadly events into tradable outcomes, and treating devastating world events as something of a game, become unethical, even dystopian?
While gambling regulation in Ireland is still tied up in long-running conversations about advertising, the world has entered a new era.
What approach will our regulatory authority take to such a vastly expanded gambling landscape, a world where you can make money from missile strikes by betting on their timing?
