Taylor Swift fans are accustomed to poring over her music, videos, social media posts and paparazzi sightings for clues about every element of her life. But the global frenzy over the star’s nuptials to American footballer Travis Kelce this weekend raised the stakes.
Over the past few months, Swifties have flocked to prediction market sites, betting millions of dollars on everything from the date and location of the wedding to who might be a bridesmaid and who would design her dress.
Prediction markets allow punters to “trade on anything” – effectively betting on the likelihood of future events. The online platforms create markets, typically binary “yes or no” questions with a strict expiration date, and users buy and sell contracts related to everything from politics to sports in the hope of winning big. They became popular during the 2024 US election, when $3.5bn was wagered on the outcome of the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket, both billion-dollar startups, are pitching themselves to new audiences, particularly young women, by setting up markets dedicated to online speculation regarding the minutiae of big cultural events, from Oscar winners to Superbowl half-time performers.
The Swift-Kelce wedding has generated more than $6.3m in trades, according to Kalshi, and on Polymarket dozens of individual markets related to the event topped $300,000 each.
According to Kalshi’s own figures, three times as many women have made bets on the Swift-Kelce wedding than other markets since the couple got engaged last August. “There has been a lot of trading activity around Taylor’s wedding – 30% of people come to our platform to trade and 70% come just to watch the odds,” Clarissa Bronfman, culture lead from Kalshi, said.
Market tracking has become a new form of fandom. At the beginning of the year, the most popular bet for the location of the wedding was Swift’s $18m Rhode Island mansion, followed by New York, where Swift owns four properties, and Tennessee, where she spent her teenage years.
Hugh Grant and Anna Elisabet Eberstein arrive for the two-day wedding extravaganza
That was until early April, when eagle-eyed fans first realised no marriage licence had been requested in Rhode Island and that a permit to close streets and Penn Station in New York had been approved for the Fourth of July weekend. The market flipped in favour of an NYC marriage.
Since the start of June, the likelihood of Swift and Kelce getting married at Madison Square Garden, seen as an unexpected choice given its association with sticky-floored concerts and giant sporting events, has accrued more than $1.75m in bets on Kalshi.
Still, there were rumours that the whole thing was a ruse. When the market finally closed in the early hours of Saturday morning, as the first evening of the multi-day event came to an end, traders who bet against a MSG wedding cried foul. One bemoaned their $500 loss, arguing that the market could not be closed until there was definitive proof of a wedding licence.
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Despite a statement from Swift’s publicist on Saturday confirming the wedding, another user called the result “a scam” and pledged to uninstall the app.
Users had better luck with her dress: 60.5% accurately bet that she would choose a custom Dior wedding gown over Vera Wang or Louis Vuitton – leading to a total payout of more than $250,000.
The boom of prediction markets has caused concern for some researchers. “We are witnessing the gamification of trading and the gamblification of everything, especially entertainment news such as [this] wedding,” said Sarah Mills, professor of human geography at Loughborough University.
Mills said that prediction markets are actively trying to entice more women to use their platforms. The way they responded to the Swift-Kelce wedding is a “clear example of offering bets that are designed to attract more female users”, she said.
Experts say the patterns in the way prediction markets are used echo those of traditional betting platforms. As with slot machines and “in-play” bets in sports games, there is a high risk of addiction and financial losses. Kalshi and Polymarket have stressed that they are not gambling sites. For this reason, they do not have a gambling licence and are therefore not available in the UK, although they can be accessed using VPNs.
Researchers say stronger regulations and safeguards are required. Kalshi and Polymarket are restricted in some US states and banned in several countries.
It’s clear that betting on outcomes will only grow in a post-Swift wedding economy – but it’s unlikely that prediction markets will ever be as rewarding to Swifties as hunting for online clues.
Tom Weller / dpa / Avalon, Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Tom Weller / dpa Picture Alliance GmbH / Avalon, Roy Rochlin