{"id":328536,"date":"2026-03-14T00:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T00:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/328536\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T00:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T00:38:07","slug":"chalamet-or-jordan-now-oscar-watchers-can-put-serious-money-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/328536\/","title":{"rendered":"Chalamet or Jordan? Now, Oscar Watchers Can Put Serious Money on It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTimoth\u00e9e Chalamet was the overwhelming favorite to win the best actor Oscar until about two weeks ago, when Michael B. Jordan won SAG\u2019s Actor Award. Suddenly, the price of a Chalamet contract on Kalshi<\/a> dropped from 68\u00a2 to 51\u00a2.<\/p>\n

\n\tChalamet remained a narrow favorite. But when his remarks seeming to deprecate ballet and opera started to draw backlash on March 6, he fell again. Since March 7, Jordan has been the frontrunner.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt makes little difference \u2014 to Kalshi users \u2014 that Oscar balloting had closed on March 5, meaning that the ballet controversy came too late to affect the outcome. The vibe had shifted \u2014 and the market corrected to meet it.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy March 10, traders had bought $48.4 million worth of Oscar contracts on Kalshi \u2014 far exceeding the $29.6 million total from 2025. And with activity expected to ramp up in the days before the Oscar show on Sunday, the final tally for 2026 is projected to run significantly higher.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s definitely one of our faster growing verticals,\u201d says Jack Such, a spokesperson for Kalshi. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the tentpole individual events. It\u2019ll do tons of volume.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe days of $5 per entry office pools are becoming quaint as prediction markets explode. In January, Polymarket<\/a>, Kalshi\u2019s main rival, went all in on the Golden Globes (which is owned by Penske Media Corporation, which also owns Variety). The Globes featured real-time odds on the telecast, encouraging viewers to make the show more interesting by putting money on it. Some social media users thought the integration risked overshadowing the awards.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Polymarket, $30 million had been traded on best picture alone as of Thursday \u2014 surpassing the $5.3 million for the entirety of the best picture race in 2025. \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d is the clear favorite on both platforms, at about 75\u00a2. Between the two, more than $100 million has been traded on Oscar contracts thus far.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrediction markets have been around for several years, but got a major boost in October 2024, when a federal appeals court allowed Kalshi to offer contracts on the upcoming election. While most pollsters saw the race as a coin-flip, Kalshi users bet heavily on Donald Trump \u2014 and were proven right.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince then, the markets have surged in popularity. The major sports betting platforms, DraftKings and FanDuel, have launched their own prediction markets to get in on the action.<\/p>\n

\n\tDraftKings had been offering Oscar bets since 2019, when it was allowed only in New Jersey. Gambling is regulated at the state level, and since then a few others have approved Oscar betting \u2014 Michigan, Indiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri and Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut prediction markets are not considered gambling. They are regulated as futures contracts by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As prediction platforms moved into sports, traditional gambling interests have pushed back, leading to a fight between state regulators and the CFTC over jurisdiction. The Trump administration\u2019s CFTC has asserted that it alone has authority over prediction markets.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the markets have grown in popularity, concerns have arisen about insider trading. None of those issues has arisen yet with regards to the Oscars<\/a>, and the winners themselves are famously a closely guarded secret, known only to the accountants at PwC.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut with contracts offered on which celebrities will attend, and which words will be spoken on stage (\u201cballet\u201d is trading at 62\u00a2 on Polymarket) it\u2019s not hard to imagine the possibilities for mischief.<\/p>\n

\n\tKalshi maintains surveillance systems to flag suspicious trading activity, similar to those used on stock exchanges.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf the system flags something, we look into it,\u201d Such says. \u201cAnd then, because we have everyone\u2019s information, we can be like, \u2018Oh, wow. This is Nicole Kidman\u2019s high school best friend,\u2019 or whatever, right? The surveillance system and identity verification does the trick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKalshi forbids Academy members from trading on Oscar contracts. The Academy does not have an explicit rule against it, but does have maintain Standards of Conduct that require a general level of professionalism and integrity in the voting process.<\/p>\n

\n\tKalshi did face controversy in 2025, when it offered contracts on whether the Oscar TV ratings would exceed the viewership in previous years. The initial reporting showed that viewership was down \u2014 and so the contracts resolved to \u201cno.\u201d But the next day, additional data showed that the ratings were actually up. Kalshi faulted the New York Times \u2014 one of the authorities cited in its contract \u2014 saying the paper did not make clear that the initial data was preliminary.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just a weird edge case,\u201d Such says. \u201cIt\u2019s not really on us \u2014 like, we\u2019re not the ones who got it wrong. And in fact, we have to abide by what we say in the contract.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKalshi is not offering an Oscar viewership contract this year.<\/p>\n

\n\tDraftKings is overwhelmingly a platform for sports betting. But its Oscar offerings, which now include prediction markets as well as wagering, have proved to be a draw for female users.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re not only a sports company,\u201d says Johnny Avello, director of race and sports operations at DraftKings. \u201cWe\u2019re an entertainment company. Our customers tell us what they want, and we oblige.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, in terms of volume, it remains a novelty: \u201cDon\u2019t ever confuse this with what we\u2019re going to take on a Sunday NFL game. That is no joke,\u201d says Avello.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet was the overwhelming favorite to win the best actor Oscar until about two weeks ago, when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6334,430,156,46046,111,139,69,2584,68143],"class_list":{"0":"post-328536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-academy-awards","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-kalshi","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-oscars","16":"tag-polymarket"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}