If you’re betting on the California wildfires, I don’t know what to tell you. Go outside (if it’s safe). Do some reflection. Call a gambling addiction hotline, maybe. Although I suppose the impulse to bet on destruction isn’t all bettors’ fault – gambling companies have people where they want them, betting on things most of us wouldn’t have imagined on our own a few years ago. We’re at the end of the new year and it already seems like the gambling boom has gone too far.
In case you missed it, prediction market Polymarket is allowing people to place bets on aspects of the wildfires that have ravaged the Los Angeles area. The platform placed various markets on questions such as how long it would take to contain the first fire, how quickly the various flames would burn and where they would spread.
The cryptocurrency-based market — which is off-limits to US gamblers, though some try to bypass it with a VPN — seemed to understand that this might not go down well. In a disclaimer on the site, Polymarket says the purpose of its prediction markets is to “harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate and unbiased predictions about the most important events that affect society.” The “devastating” fires were one such event which Polymarket said could “provide invaluable real-time answers to those directly affected in ways that traditional media cannot”. In other words, if you want to know if your house is going to burn down, check what a bunch of anonymous gamblers outside the US think — hopefully in addition to the news and local authorities and, you know, your own eyes.
The idea of punters trying to make a quick buck when lives and livelihoods are at stake is morally fraught. It’s also a sign of the times: gambling is becoming more and more common, and in the process, the lines around what is appropriate, logical and ethical are becoming increasingly blurred. If 2024 was the year we wondered if US gambling culture had gone too far, 2025 may be the year we get an answer.
It’s tempting to look down on gamblers who take things too far, depending on your tolerance for such things. But the problem with blaming individuals for getting in over their heads is that you miss the forest for the trees. Betting platforms and the gambling industry are designed to absorb customers and make them bet at higher rates and in different ways.
While Polymarket may operate in a gray area, even the formal, highly regulated platforms in the US are enticing people to develop a deeper relationship with betting. Businesses want to cross-sell – once Caesars gets you into its sports betting pipeline, it would love to drive you to the casino. DraftKings is launching a subscription service that entices bettors with the chance to win extra cash on super long bets. Delta Air Lines also recently announced a sportsbook partnership that could integrate its offerings or branding into in-seat gaming options, though details are unclear. These innovations don’t rival something as clearly problematic as betting on wildfires, but they do show that gambling companies are succeeding in getting into more nooks and crannies of society.
In a statement to Business Insider, a spokesperson for DraftKings said that the sports betting industry is “strictly regulated” and that the company operates in “strict compliance” with the regulations of each jurisdiction in which it is located. “Equating DraftKings with unregulated prediction markets — especially those that fall outside the scope of US regulations — is not only a gross misrepresentation, but an affront to the integrity of responsible, law-abiding regulators and operators.” the spokesman said.
If 2024 was the year we wondered if US gambling culture had gone too far, 2025 may be the year we get an answer.
It’s impossible to ignore the recent cultural shift when it comes to gambling. After decades of operating in the shadows, sports gambling is everywhere: Americans are thought to have bet about $150 billion on sports in 2024, up from about $120 billion in 2023, and gambling ads are almost inevitable during many sporting events of the country. the country. Beyond sports, some operators, including Robinhood, offer betting on things like elections. Polymarket’s bread and butter may be elections, but it’s also letting people bet on whether we’ll see a new pandemic in 2025 or whether Israel and Hamas will agree to a ceasefire. People are even treating nominally non-gambling areas like the stock market, crypto, and even restaurant reservations as if they were a casino. However you feel about gambling – maybe you’re cool with it, maybe you think it’s bad – the speed at which the lines move around it can make your head spin.
A spokesperson for Polymarket told me that the company did not generate fees or revenue from fire-related markets (or any of its markets) and described the markets as “a way to distinguish signal from noise in a news-starved environment. quantitative data.” They added: “These markets address the same questions discussed in all of cable news and X. We’ve proven that markets can be an invaluable source of alternative information. for those looking for real-time quantitative data.”
Fire-related markets are small — the largest, about how many acres will burn, had about $275,000 in it Friday afternoon. By comparison, more than $400 million has been wagered on who will be inaugurated as US president on January 20. Why do it at all then? The smaller the prediction market, meaning the less money bet on it, the less the idea of the wisdom of the crowd holds. This belies the argument that this is a noble effort to get information – it’s just a handful of hyper-online gawkers betting on the outcome of an event that is devastating to thousands of people.
How far do we want to gamble?
The proliferation of betting – both in what you can gamble and where you can gamble – is changing our relationship with it. In a 2024 survey of US adults by the American Gaming Association, 55% of respondents said they had participated in some type of gambling in the past year, up from 49% the year before. And Gallup polls suggest that a healthy majority of Americans view gambling as morally acceptable. At the extreme, the gambling industry envisions a future where people will bet on everything and be able to make markets on anything. Maybe one day you’ll be able to set up a mini-market for people to bet on whether it will rain on your wedding day. On the one hand, whatever, maybe this is just some extra fun to make the day more exciting. On the other hand, you can just check the weather and otherwise enjoy your wedding without turning it into a profitable event for random people on the internet. Many people are able to enjoy watching sports games without gambling as well, even though sportsbooks spend a lot of money to convince people that betting really increases the fun quotient.
There will be many “tipping point” moments for gambling in the months and years to come. For many people, betting is a new way to find pleasure and enjoy life. But finding where the boundaries are – socially and legally – is a critical process with no easy, straightforward answers. When we can bet on more and more things in more and more places, it’s fair to ask: How far do we want to gamble?
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
