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In our second episode this season, we dive into the high-stakes world of online wagering. We trace the path of online sports betting from offshore sites like the World Sports Exchange to the landmark 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Murphy v. NCAA, which dismantled the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act ban on sports gambling and launched a billion-dollar industry.
What was once a legal grey area has moved into the mainstream, as betting doesn't stop with sports and has led to the rise of digital prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, where stats nerds and political junkies trade futures contracts on real-world outcomes on everything from Billboard charts to the next occupant of the Oval Office. Are these digital markets the new YouGov poll, or just a gamified version of the public square?
These markets often beat traditional polling by aggregating real-time data and financial incentives, but are they free from their users' biases?
Special guests:
- Seth Shankle, avid sports bettor
- Koleman Strumpf, professor of economics at Wake Forest University
- Tom Miller, faculty director of the data science program at Northwestern University and operator of The Virtual Tout
This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.
Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.
