Sports betting tends to involve a “spread” so the favored team must win by a certain amount. So if team A is favored to win and the spread is 7, you lose a bet on them if they only win by 6 or less. The spread is chosen to induce a 50/50 split of bets. So if team A is favored and the spread is 7 half the people think they’ll win by more than 7 and the other half thinks they’ll lose or at least not win by 7 or more.

These “prediction markets” pool all the money together and you get a portion of that pool depending on how much you wagered. So if you place $100 and are the only bet on the US bombing Iran on a specific date, and a 5 others bet $10000, you win $10100 (minus some fees) and they win nothing. If those 5 bet $2000 each, they’d only get $2020 each (minus some fees).

Which is what I find crazy. That money comes from advertising which is not endless. How are the advertisers able to show any semblance of ROI when nothing is passing through? Obviously Spotify doesn’t care if the proles voice their discontent. But how are they able to keep the advertisers from getting fed up with no returns?