My Week Trying to Get Rich on Prediction Markets

I’ve never been much of a gambling man. Growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, I knew a few bookies. Suffice it to say, they were not the sort you ever wanted to owe money to, so I left the gambling to other, braver men. In my early 20s, I hung out with some young journalists who bet on football every Sunday. For a while I joined them, until I got tired of losing money week after week. My last significant bet came in 1986, when I put money on my beloved New England Patriots to defeat the mighty Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XX. The final score was Chicago 46, New England 10.

For most of my life, of course, gambling was illegal, unless you went to Las Vegas. Even after the rise of FanDuel and DraftKings, I was never tempted. But now, prediction markets have arrived—and somehow, they feel different. They offer betting opportunities that go well beyond sports. After Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, I wrote a story about a French investor who made $85 million betting that Trump would win. Needless to say, that piqued my interest.

Since then, prediction markets have only gotten bigger. In April, the two biggest players, Polymarket and Kalshi, processed $24 billion in trading volume—more than 10 times what they did a year earlier, according to the Pew Research Center. Some 40 percent of American men between the ages 18 and 34 are using prediction markets, an April survey found.

And the companies have been cutting deals with major media companies: New York–based Kalshi has agreements with CNN, CNBC, and Fox, while Polymarket, which is officially registered in Panama City, has partnership arrangements with The Wall Street Journal and Substack. The media companies see the prediction markets not just as lucrative sponsors, but also as a potentially more accurate alternative to polls, which have a checkered track record in recent elections.