In our corner of the sports world, betting is everywhere.
Consider Major League Baseball: The league has official sports partners, the broadcast home of its “Sunday Night Baseball” show has an official sportsbook, and the Dodgers’ World Series celebration was sponsored by a local resort and casino. On the television screen, the bottom line provides updates on odds and scores.
You can bet on the next pitch, the next home run, the next game, the next World Series. You may enjoy sports betting, or you may despise it.
Betting on disaster? Profiting from the pain of our society? We should all condemn that.
Polymarket, which calls itself a “prediction market,” invites you starting Thursday to raise money on 18 questions related to the Southern California wildfires, including this one: How many acres will the Palisades fire burn Friday? Will the Palisades wildfire spread to Santa Monica on Sunday? When will the Palisades wildfire be 50% contained? Will all LA wildfires be completely contained before February?
“My guess,” said Nathaniel Fast, director of the USC Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, “is that most people don’t like the idea of people betting or making money off disasters and calamities.”
Polymarket aims to set an opportunity for something to happen, and then put together a collective vision to adjust those opportunities in real time.
For example, with the chance of the Palisades wildfire being 50% contained by Jan. 19 placed at 86% on Thursday, you can take “yes” and you can win $102 or take “no” and you can win $571. The market adjusts the opportunity, and the opportunity adjusts the market.
In a statement to the Times, a spokesperson for Polymarket said: “These markets answer the same questions that are discussed in the cable and X news. We have proven that forecast markets can be another very valuable source of information for those looking for real-time quantitative data. “
Fast said: “I find it difficult to imagine that people enter Polymarket to decide whether to leave or not.”
“On the other hand, though, if they can show over and over again in events like this that they can really produce accurate predictions, I think it’s possible that, in the future, this could be a useful tool.”
With so much social media misinformation generated by the event and its aftermath, speculative markets driven by the social media sector are at their own risk.
On its site, Polymarket says this is one of the company’s criteria for opening a prediction market: “Is there any social good or news value in understanding the opportunities the market generates?”
Fast said: “It can lead to a motivation to influence events or, in the case of wildfires, it can lead to an attitude of indifference to the suffering of others. If we play with matters of life and death, it can have a negative impact on culture and society in a way that we don’t like.”
Polymarket provides odds on topics such as the NFL playoffs, whether Donald Trump will follow through on his promise to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, whether Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift will get engaged this year, and how often Elon Musk will write in -Twitter for a given week.
All good. But this is not the first time that Polymarket has used a crisis as a basis for investment.
In 2023, after the submarine Titan was lost at sea en route to the Titanic, Polymarket asked: “Will the missing submarine be found on June 23?” Mother Jones found two investors, one who bet yes and one who bet no.
“Despite taking opposite sides of the bet, due to smart playing the odds were tough,” reports Mother Jones, “both … walked away with thousands of dollars.”
Polymarket doesn’t want to. According to a company spokesperson, Polymarket “does not charge fees for any market and is currently not issuing funds.”
That might be the only thing worse than a company that profits from people’s misfortune: a technology startup that allows more people to profit from people’s misfortune.
Polymarket’s statement to the Times began: “We express our deepest sympathies to everyone affected by these fires and appreciate the heroic work of first responders and everyday Angelenos.”
This statement holds nothing as long as people can still put their dollars into the tragedies that befall everyday Angelenos. Polymarket should reduce those chances of wildfire. Those six historic words from 1954 ring true today: Have you no sense of honor?
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