The World Cup is coming this summer and I’m here for it. I’m not a fan of every sport, but I am a fan of games in every sport where the stakes are high and the best players bring their A-games. That means I’ll even watch basketball, which I do not like, if a championship is on the line. But you can’t watch any of it without being blasted with ad after ad for the seemingly endless supply of sportsbooks out there clamoring for a slice of people’s money.
Let me just say that I don’t care what you do with your money; it’s yours and you can set it on fire for all I care. (Though, if you’re so inclined and want some quality entertainment, signing up for my hilarious and foul-mouthed podcast once a week is the best way to spend a couple of bucks per month, just saying.) But if you can’t simply enjoy a game for the sake of the game and need to have money on it, well, there’s a group for that.
Still, I don’t care if you bet and lose your house or bet and win enough money for a house – you’re an adult, knock yourself out. I simply question whether you’re a fan of the game or a fan of the rush you get from betting on it.
It seems to me that wherever you are in America these days, you are never more than 30-60 minutes from a casino, with many states allowing casino games to be played on phones.
I also remember when I was in college in Detroit, and they opened up three casinos. We’d go there after a night of drinking because they were open all night, we were wasted and didn’t want to go home, plus we could get food and smoke there. We couldn’t really gamble, as the blackjack minimums were $25 a hand (except for the one table that was $5, but good luck getting one of the eight seats at it), and we simply couldn’t afford that.
But if you went there around the start of the month, you saw something horribly depressing: a flood of senior citizens hitting the buttons on slot machines like it was the key to continued life. The nursing homes, in what I had to assume was a deal with the casinos, would bus the elderly downtown when they got their Social Security checks and they’d be there at 3:00 am when we drunks would filter in. It was sad, but they weren’t forced to be there.
Now, cable news is turning into that casino floor, or that intermission report brought to you by Give Us Your Money Sportsbook and their spokesman, Oscar-Winning Actor or Retired Sports Legend.
CNN has partnered with Kalshi, which calls itself a “prediction market” but is really another gambling hub for people who need to bet on election outcomes and world events. It works like a stock with a max price of 100 and a minimum of 0. Until something is concluded, the prices fluctuate between those two, and the objective is to buy low and sell high. If you could buy James Talarico winning the Texas Senate race for 10 cents per share and sell it for 44 cents per share (where it stands now), you would have made a nice profit on a “bet” of $100. However, if you wait till election night and he wins, you’d get 99 cents per share (or whatever it is, as the site takes a cut) and make even more. But if he loses, you get nothing.
The price moves with whatever the sentiment of the moment is: if more people dump a candidate or event, the price drops; if the news or polls are good that day, the price increases, etc.
Think of the concept what you will, but it is in no way news. Yet, CNN (and to a lesser extent, the other “news” stations) report it as if it is meaningful and indicative of anything other than people trying to make money.
In December, CNN officially partnered with Kalshi, so they have a financial incentive to use their “numbers” as news, pretend they have meaning and nudge people into “playing the market.” They can also help shape the price by choosing what to report and how to report it. Betting on an election months away is very different from betting on a game that ends when the clock runs out that night. The prospect for manipulation is huge, as is the push to use meaningless numbers as if they’re indicative of something.
These aren’t prediction markets, they’re guessing games. They’re the tarot card reader at the mall with high stakes.
Again, I don’t care if you want to gamble with your money, but I do care if news and information is shaped by the desire (and even need) to shape perceptions in order to promote or push gambling markets in one direction or another, or hip-check viewers into betting rather than simply informing them.
These prediction markets indicate nothing, as predicting the future is impossible. All you can do is guess right or wrong. I bet on these things about five years ago, basically broke even. It was fun, but pointless. Now they’re everywhere and shaping the news rather than reflecting it. That’s not good, either for people looking to be informed or for people looking to make a buck.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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