By Ben Smith
Ways Prediction Markets Are Changing How People Engage With Entertainment
In recent years, prediction markets have taken off because they let fans speculate on all kinds of events, instead of just the usual sports actions you’d find at a sportsbook. This has led to all sorts of pop culture markets where fans try to predict what will happen next, in music, movies, and more.
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Awards Shows & Accolades
Prediction markets ask a question and issue contracts for each answer, priced to reflect the odds of that contract winning according to all the traders interested in it. Traders buy and sell as the contracts move with fan sentiment, with peaks and troughs that change with media coverage or real-world happenings.
This formula has mapped perfectly onto awards shows where, like backing a team in a football tournament, fans can instead put money on their favorite movie to win at the Academy Awards. Markets like Kalshi cover all of the big ones, while offering bonuses of up to $2,000 to new traders, as covered on SBD. Those traders who have bought into a contract have two options – wait it out and see if they win (where its value would rocket to $1) or sell the contract at highs if the price swings up. This means it could be possible for a trader to buy a film to win an Oscar, sell when it looks like a sure thing, and make a return even if, an hour later, that film doesn’t win the award. In that case, those who held the contract would see it drop down to 1c fast.
As it stands, only the most dedicated fans pay attention to industry award shows. Prediction markets give them a new way to engage where, instead of watching out of curiosity or simple fan interest, some can get rewarded for their industry knowledge by accurately predicting the winner. Sticking with the Academy Awards as an example, consider that sometimes pundits claim it’s a seasoned actor’s ‘turn’ to win, based on their whole career and past snubs. It’s a strategic, meta tip that only tapped-in viewers know, and might prompt them to back a veteran actor even if their film is considered weaker in mainstream eyes.
Movie & Music Metrics
Metrics are front and center in today’s entertainment landscape, largely thanks to the streaming services that distribute them. While some figures can be hard to obtain, some prediction markets ask fans to guess how many streams an album will get on Spotify, or how a new movie will get rated on Rotten Tomatoes. Same as our award show example, it helps to understand how these metrics are counted, like how the Tomatometer actually works.
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Weekly markets target the top Netflix shows, in the US or globally, though they often go hand-in-hand. In recent markets, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story handily beat competitors like A Different World and The Gentlemen: Season 2. Those with a knack for the corporate side of things can also find markets revolving around these streamers’ subscriber counts and earnings reports, and whether they’ll beat expectations or not.
On the music front, there are Top Artist, Top Song, Top Podcast markets and more for Spotify, including whether they’ll release their Wrapped before or after December 3rd this year. Each song-related market presents an interesting challenge, as traders aren’t choosing their own personal favorites, but instead what they perceive the most mainstream, most-played songs to be, based on Spotify’s own numbers.
By offering these different opportunities for fans to put money where their mouths are, these markets are changing how some people engage with entertainment. It can potentially reward diehards for knowledge they already had, while it can inspire more casual fans to dig deeper into the media they follow.
