Prediction markets are courting women with pop culture

Prediction markets are already making their mark on American culture, but recently they have been especially persistent about attracting a particular audience: women. Social media campaigns are popping up online, urging women to place their bets on sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket. But instead of sports, women are wagering on their love of pop culture.

Gambling is in its #girlboss era

Up until recently, prediction markets have had a “dude problem,” said The Atlantic. Despite hosting all kinds of wagers, including celebrity gossip like Taylor Swift’s possible bridesmaids, the user base has skewed mostly male. They have largely become “yet another place for men to bet on football and March Madness.” Now, Polymarket and Kalshi are trying to lure more women to their sites using “social media campaigns that parrot the language of female empowerment and girlish memes.”

Some posts are company advertisements, while others are paid influencer partnerships. Some posts are “either undisclosed partnerships” or made by “women who are just super excited to post a suspicious amount of links to Polymarket,” the Atlantic added. When the markets attempt to entice women, they “especially tend to lean into the idea that all of this is investing, not gambling.” Kalshi, in particular, has been “ramping up its efforts with women.” The fact that one of the company’s co-founders, Luana Lopes Lara, has become the youngest self-made female billionaire only adds to the #girlboss appeal.

A campaign that seems to be gaining steam appeals to the fan base of the popular dating reality show, Love Island USA. The massive fandom, which includes a large proportion of women, is “already doing the forecasting work of analysts,” so the “pipeline from group chat guesswork to prediction markets” is “evidently short,” said Time. Kalshi is capitalizing on the cultural phenomenon by “showing up where the fandom already lives,” sponsoring influencer posts that are “turning episode recaps into market analysis.”

In this season’s first two weeks, Love Island USA markets “amassed more than $20 million in trading volume on Kalshi,” said Time. For context, the latest Oscars race for Best Picture “drew $25 million in trading volume.” The show is testing whether “social-media dominance” can translate into “record trading volume for a television show” and whether the show’s “female-skewing audience can reshape who trades on prediction markets.”

The value of women traders

Prediction markets “operate on a simple premise”: prices get “smarter when a more diverse public participates,” and a “crowd dominated by one kind of trader can only be so wise,” said Time. Love Island USA’s “significance in the marketplace” may have “little to do with forecasting the winner of a reality dating show,” and everything to do with “bringing prediction markets closer to the wisdom of crowds they promise to harness.”

Simply put, women are “50% of the population,” Elisabeth Diana, Kalshi’s head of communications, said to The Atlantic, noting that 26% of Kalshi account holders are female — up from 13% just 10 months ago. The more women there are betting, the “closer these sites get to their stated goal of forecasting the future,” said the outlet. If they want to be able to predict “the Fed’s next interest rate, the winner of The Bachelor, or whether or not it will rain tomorrow in Poughkeepsie,” a market “made up only of male sports fans won’t cut it.” If women start “using them en masse,” prediction markets will “burrow into American life even more deeply.”

Regardless, the threat of gambling addiction looms over the growing popularity of prediction markets. There is “going to be an absolute epidemic,” Kitty Martz, the executive director of Voices of Problem Gambling Recovery, said to The Independent. It is worrying that companies are targeting Gen Z and young Millennials because they are at a stage of life when they are “trying to have some equity in getting into the workforce, [buying] homes and paying off tuition.” Women have these “very specific concerns,” and the prediction markets’ strategy seems to be to “convert that concern into contracts.” There needs to be “actual, robust warnings” that the “more you do it, the more you’re going to lose.”