Much has been written about the issues with the recent popularity of sports gambling, such as financial hardships, as reported by the American Institute for Boys and Men, harassment faced by college athletes, as reported by CBS and the NCAA, an increase in domestic violence incidents and the company's reliance on and exploitation of people with addiction, as reported by The Atlantic.
This is bad enough for sports, but somehow, it’s gotten even worse, as the addictive process of “bet anywhere, anytime” has been taken to a new extreme. As gambling websites are shifting focus to betting on current events, there could be someone right now, opening the news, praying that more civilians are murdered in cold blood just so they can win some extra money to spend on beer.
Websites like Polymarket, one of the largest gambling websites in the world, haven't dominated with sports anymore. Instead, the top bets are around this week's midterm elections. Not just who will win or lose, but like sports, the minute details, such as what Zohran Mamdani will say in his victory or concession speech. Opening this page takes you even deeper into the options. Will he say “New York” over 10 times? Will he mention the subway? Will he mention Islam?
Founded in 2020, Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan told Forbes the site was founded to be a “trusted information source,” particularly to solve the “rampant misinformation” around the pandemic. Despite facing troubles with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the website’s ascension, Polymarket was able to comply with all regulations imposed and continued to rise, making its founder the youngest billionaire in the world.
Despite whatever legal hurdles Polymarket has cleared, the platform’s prominence is a sign of just how cartoonishly far capitalist society has gone. Just one look into the platform’s “geopolitics” section shows bets for things like “Will the US take action against Venezuela?,” “When is the next time Israel will bomb Gaza?” and “Will China invade Taiwan?” It’s sickening to think that these world events, all of which would or have already caused an insane amount of death, have become “money lines.”
The fact that this platform, created to be a source of “trusted information,” encourages you to only engage with said information to improve your bottom line is disgusting. There’s already such a wealth of misinformation and people who only consume news to serve a confirmation bias. We don’t need people viewing the news primarily through a lens of making personal profit.
Polymarket isn’t the only website like this. Competitors like Kalshi and BetUS have either emerged or added non-sports features to their sites. Why wouldn’t they? This is clearly a successful model, and as is the case with capitalism, this innovation needs to be adopted to compete financially.
To play devil’s advocate, there are probably people out there thinking, “Well, all of these awful things will happen with or without me betting on it.” They’d be right, and these platforms are simply leeching themselves onto every single news item and trying to extract monetary value.
It’s just capitalism taken to its logical extreme, maximising profit at every opportunity. If you view that as democratic and empowering and a way to use your political savvy for profit, then this is for you.
However, if your morals prevent you from hopping on the bandwagon, the shamelessness with which platforms like this operate can be disheartening. This is a sign that society is increasingly cool with trading human life for a quick buck.
How you follow this line of thinking is a discussion for another day, but the instantaneous nature of modern gambling has, no doubt, made society worse. Gambling was already a problem before phones, and sports betting is an even bigger issue today. The difference before is that the subject material bet on, games, is relatively harmless. While it’s led to corruption, as seen recently in the NBA, betting on Patrick Mahomes’ playing ability feels far less icky than betting on when nations will go to war.
Nicholas is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Nicholas about his column? Email him at nk696121@ohio.edu.
