Predictions markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket "have a dude problem," writes Nancy Walecki at the Atlantic. Which is to say, most of their users are guys placing wagers on sports. That helps explain an aggressive new crop of social media ads aimed at women that frame bets on everything from pop-culture to politics not as gambling but, as one ad puts it, "girl math." The campaigns lean on pastel memes and #girlboss language, depicting wagers as savvy financial moves. "If I'm already scrolling news or pop culture anyway, might as well turn my hot takes into some free iced coffees," says one young woman in a Kalshi ad.
The push appears to be working. As the Wall Street Journal reported in a previous story, Kalshi in particular says women now make up 26% of its users, double the share from 10 months ago. Behind the branding is a harder reality: These sites are facing lawsuits and state crackdowns accusing them of functioning as unlicensed sports-betting operations, and expanding beyond sports could help their legal case. "Perhaps the biggest concern with these ads is that they make it easy to forget that you can actually lose money on prediction markets," writes Walecki. She calls attention to one Kalshi ad featuring a woman boasting about winning two years' worth of rent. The ad, which has since been taken down, is now part of a class-action suit alleging inadequate risk disclosures.
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