Hunter Button first learned about prediction markets the way most people did — through elections. He started by hedging his vote on the 2020 presidential race, figuring he could at least make some money if his preferred candidate lost. Soon he found ways to earn some cash taking positions on tennis matches or which songs might top the Spotify charts.

This July he came across a market on Kalshi for "Love Island USA," a reality dating competition TV show that airs daily in the summertime. Unlike with his election betting, Hunter took a more agnostic approach. He took an initial stake of about $8 for multiple couples to win the show, figuring if one couple lost, then another bet would pay out. (The winning pair is determined by audience vote.)

A few months later, he was up about $1,000. “I personally don’t even like to watch the events,” says Button, a sales analyst from Portland, Oregon. “I still have not ever seen a tennis game or watched 'Love Island.'”

Prediction markets have ballooned in popularity in the past few years, driven mostly by bets on sports and crypto prices. Recently, these companies have expanded into culture and entertainment, with bets ranging from Rotten Tomatoes scores for new movies to the release date of "Grand Theft Auto VI."

This year, Kalshi’s entertainment trading volume hit $813 million by Sept. 25, up from about $300 million in all of 2025 and just $43 million in 2024, the company says. Polymarket, the other major prediction-market platform, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Until now, the markets have largely operated as a response to cultural events — scroll through Kalshi and you’ll find open bets for the Oscars, "Dancing With the Stars" and "The Voice." But as Kalshi and Polymarket become cultural juggernauts of their own, their entertainment offerings threaten to upend the viewing experience, fans and producers say. Accusations of insider trading and changing audiences are forcing the reality TV industry to reckon with the formats of their beloved shows.

Entertainment value

Kalshi and Polymarket’s push into entertainment and culture has become particularly salient in the world of reality television. "Love Island USA’s" eighth season was the most-viewed original series on Peacock, with nearly 19 billion minutes streamed this summer. Its skyrocketing viewership provided an opportunity for Kalshi and Polymarket to capitalize on their cultural push, advertising dozens of markets on contestant eliminations, challenges and the ultimate winner.

As prediction-market platforms aim to broaden participation in categories beyond sports and politics, cultural events are a natural next step, says Eric Zitzewitz, an economics professor at Dartmouth College. Cultural offerings on topics like the details of Taylor Swift’s wedding are a good way of drawing people to the platforms and perhaps nudging them to trade on other categories that are more economically significant, he notes.

Prediction-market users tend to skew toward young, educated men, Zitzewitz says. As prediction-market trading grows in the U.S., bets on shows with a big female audience (like "Love Island USA") can entice women to the platform. Only a quarter of Kalshi users are women, but the overall share of women on the platform has increased by 60% since 2025, the company says.

Reality television is ripe for the betting markets, says Anthony Palomba, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business who specializes in media and the economy. The shows are somewhat unscripted, adding a layer of unpredictability that makes bets more exciting. Also, many of them exist as competitions, making it easy to transfer parts of the infrastructure of sports betting onto them.

“Gamifying certain experiences is what makes reality TV distinct from other genres,” Palomba says. “What betting markets enable for is financializing the narrative suspense.”

Over the summer, total trading volume for all "Love Island" U.S. and U.K. markets on Kalshi was about $80 million. Some of those bettors, like Button, weren’t fans of the show at all, instead basing their predictions on fluctuations in the market. For a particular prediction market to be lucrative, it needs to be frequented by a mix of traders, Zitzewitz says. Some do it for pleasure, but others are trying to predict probabilities better than the market can.

If something is too well-known or prone to rumors of insider trading, then people won’t invest in the market, and it won’t have enough liquidity, Zitzewitz says. The best markets are on fun, accessible events that people have strong feelings about, he adds.

Prediction markets have started cracking down on potential cases of insider trading in areas like entertainment and politics. In February, Kalshi fined and suspended an employee of YouTube streamer MrBeast for placing bets related to what would happen in future MrBeast videos.

Possibilities for mischief

Some viewers aren’t pleased with speculators betting on the outcome of their show, worrying this can lead to spoilers. Fans accused Polymarket and Kalshi of ruining the 50th season of the competition show "Survivor" after the winner, Aubry Bracco, was favored by the apps before winning a challenge on the show. Many suggested that inside information had to be shaping the odds.

“We’re extremely early,” says Ilia Saddler, a former reality TV producer and current content creator. “Right now, the industry is still figuring out whether prediction markets are an engagement opportunity, a production risk or some combination of both.”

"Survivor" host Jeff Probst sharply criticized Polymarket and Kalshi, telling Variety the companies are “incentivizing people to lie, cheat and steal to get ahead” and called for regulation. Later, he told the New York Times’ "Popcast" that his show can either accept the existence of spoilers, or “figure out a way to bet on 'Survivor.'” “You either accept it or you get in on it.”

People have bet on outcomes in the entertainment industry for decades. In the 1990s an online game called the Hollywood Stock Exchange let people use play money to buy options on Oscar winners or stock in the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. The financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald bought the website, hoping to create a formal box office futures exchange. The idea was simple: Studio executives could hedge poor box office performance by buying a contract on their movie.

But the idea received criticism from large film studios and the Motion Picture Association of America.

“It is hard for us to conceive of how the CFTC can allow a motion picture — which is an experience, not a commodity — to be monetized and treated like Grade A wheat,” Scott Harbinson, a representative of the Directors Guild of America, said at a public meeting before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2010. An exchange could incentivize people to intentionally induce negative impressions of a film, damaging a theatrical release, he said.

“In short, the possibilities these contracts create for mischief and even disruption of the filmmaking process are unlimited — and in our warp-speed Internet age — impossible to control,” Harbinson added. In 2011, Congress amended the Onion Futures Act of 1958 to prohibit trading futures contracts on box office receipts.

But the door remains wide open to a vast array of contracts, and regulators are just starting to catch up. In June, the CFTC requested public opinion on whether markets on reality TV should be treated the same as sports betting in a legal context.

A new, detached audience

The gamification — and monetization — of reality television heralds a shift in how the shows are produced, and how audiences consume them. Markets for reality TV show winners make up a small fraction of trades on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, according to investment research firm Paradigm.

But the millions of dollars in the market could change the way shows are viewed and produced, says Bob Thompson, a professor of media and television studies at Syracuse University. For one thing, the shows could draw new viewers only watching to see how their bets pan out. These bettors “might not really care whether Megan S. or Megan M. gets a rose on 'The Bachelor,'” Thompson says.

Dylan Ross, a 29-year-old living in Los Angeles, first learned about prediction markets in late 2025 as a way to bet on sports. He soon realized that “there’s no real edge” in betting on his favorite team. “I’m no smarter than any of the people who are out there market making with large data sets and algorithms,” he says.

That’s when he found reality TV. He had dabbled in watching the U.K. version of "Love Island" during the early months of the pandemic but hadn’t followed the show religiously. When he stumbled across the markets for the winner on Kalshi, he realized his basic knowledge of the format and tropes could earn him some money.

The show was no longer “brain rot” television in his mind, Ross says. “It was kind of like ‘Wow, those hours I’ve wasted now have value.’”

This summer, Ross watched the show regularly. At certain points, he says he made up to $1,500 betting that certain contestants would be eliminated. But he wouldn’t call himself a dedicated fan — he doesn’t even use the "Love Island" app to vote for contestants. “Let’s say Kalshi didn’t exist. I probably would not have been sitting around daily watching it,” Ross says.

Kalshi has stopped offering contracts on shows including "Survivor" and "Big Brother." Now that he can’t bet on "Survivor," Ross pays the show less attention. When its markets were still on Kalshi, he watched it weekly to place trades.

For reality TV, a genre defined by loud fan bases and audience engagement, these new audiences could dilute or shift the viewing experience. Although prediction markets are relatively early to the scene, the rush of investment could alter how the shows are filmed and formatted, Thompson says. He suggests reality shows might adjust by shifting to more live broadcasting to reduce the risk of leaks that can happen even when crews sign nondisclosure agreements.

Competition shows like "Survivor" finish filming months before their finales air. Before, a loose-lipped crew member risked spoiling an ending to fans eager to see the big finish. With prediction markets, thousands of dollars could be made by knowing a contestant’s elimination days or hours before the public. Given the amount of money potentially at stake, the turnaround between deciding a winner and airing it to the public needs to be as short as possible to avoid spoilers or leaks, Thompson says.

Since transitioning to live broadcasts can be expensive and time-consuming, producers will likely start by paying more attention to information security on sets, says Saddler, the former producer. “If previously low-stakes production information suddenly has significant financial value, that changes the risk calculation around who has access to sensitive information,” she says.

Unless regulations curtail the prediction markets, Thompson says, “reality TV shows are not going to look the way they have for the last couple of decades.”

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