"Love Island's Ultimate Surprise: The Impact of Prediction Markets | Vanity Fair"
When Love Island USA crowned Trinity Tatum and Bryce Dettloff its winning couple Sunday night, some viewers were jubilant; others were disappointed, depending on which contestants they backed. But these days, caring about a reality show’s outcome is not just a matter of standom. Thousands of dollars are at stake for people placing wagers on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, a development that’s stoking frustration for reality TV fans and industry insiders who worry that betting is warping an otherwise low-stakes genre—and dragging it into an ethical quagmire.
The audience ultimately decides Love Island’s winners. But long before the show’s final ceremony, prediction markets showed that Trinity and Bryce had a lock on this season’s $100,000 prize. In the weeks before the finale, viewers across social media platforms spun conspiracy theories, convinced that people with inside knowledge had been betting every step of the way, and potentially swaying the vote to ensure a bigger payout. Former Survivor and The Traitors contestant Rob Cesternino understands the skepticism, believing that these new betting markets inevitably taint the process.
“I think there will be a specter of: did the prediction markets influence how people were voting?” says Cesternino, author of The Tribe and I Have Spoken, who covers Love Island and other reality shows as the host of Rob Has a Podcast. “I suspect that somebody who was financially incentivized to win a lot of money with all of the AI tools at their disposal could possibly hack the Love Island voting. With all due respect to everybody at the villa, that’s maybe not the most sophisticated firewall that we have in the world today.”
The total volume for all Love Island USA and Love Island UK markets on Kalshi alone was at $77.3 million after last night’s trading—a figure way beyond office pools and chat-group fantasy football leagues. And although the majority of Kalshi’s traders are male, two thirds of their Love Island traders are women, according to the company. Kalshi says it has doubled its share of female traders over the last year, bombarding women (including me) with Love Island betting ads on social media, and creating paid partnerships with influencers to hype up amateur gamblers to place wagers.
On the flip side, the chance to gamble may also be inspiring more men to watch the romance competition. 'Why are there so many men watching Love Island this season?” one TikToker asked, complaining of a toxic male contingent. “They’re watching because they bet on this shit.… Sports and horses weren't enough for them so now they're fucking here.”
Episodes of Love Island generally shoot a couple days before they air, allowing bettors to wager on events that have already happened. Fans can predict who is going to be eliminated each week, who will ultimately win, and even whether a certain word or phrase (“ick,” for instance, or “where’s your head at”) will be spoken in any given episode. It’s not just Love Island, either: Less than a week into the new season of Big Brother, betting is booming.
But it was Survivor season 50 that got many reality TV viewers’ attention in May, when word spread that both Kalshi and Polymarket correctly predicted contestant Aubry Bracco as the season winner. She’d been the market’s favorite since before the season even began, and on the night of the finale, Kalshi sent out both a push notification and targeted ads suggesting Bracco would indeed clinch victory. The season had been shot many months before it aired, and so it seemed likely that a leak had sprung within the Survivor production—despite strict NDAs signed by cast and crew.
“Clearly, if 90% of the people are voting for somebody, there’s a leak,” Survivor host Jeff Probst told Variety. But he put the blame on the prediction markets gamifying the reality game in the first place. “You’re telling me there’s a way I can make money by sharing information I have, and I might not ever get caught? Of course, people are going to do that.”
Former Survivor contestant Teeny Chirichillo agrees that leaks are inevitable. “There's so many people who know the outcome,” he says, noting that the show’s alumni often trade information within their ever-expanding circle, though he thinks their motives are innocent. “Everybody is sharing the information, not to make a buck and not to get clout, but to relate to each other's experience.” You might have a current contestant who tells a former contestant, who tells a friend, and on it goes. In years past, these details sometimes made it to fan discussion boards, where people could choose to seek them out or not. The potential to parlay those spoilers into a windfall—and the near-impossibility of avoiding them—has changed everything.
“I understand the place of these betting markets in terms of events like sports, and even as a way of doing more predictive polling in elections than you might see in traditional polling methods,” says Cesternino. “But it’s insane that you’re able to bet on something like Survivor that already happened in the past, where hundreds of people know the outcome.”
Kalshi, which is federally regulated, says that it does a lot of work to combat and investigate insider trading, including checking traders’ social media for anyone who might be connected to the subject of the trade, per a source close to Kalshi. Earlier this year, the platform fined and suspended an associate of MrBeast for betting on upcoming videos. Kalshi head of enforcement Robert J. Denault also responded publicly to complaints about possible Survivor malfeasance, writing in March: “We’ve been checking backgrounds of traders in this market and have not identified anyone with any connection to Survivor. After reviewing the trading activity, it appears the likeliest explanation is that traders are following public rumors, following other traders who placed trades in the opening hours of the market, or just trading based on research and conviction.”
The entertainment industry is now faced with the dilemma of how to deal with prediction markets and the possible harm they may cause to shows’ brands. Reality TV shows are among the most popular entertainment markets, but people can also vote on Netflix’s top show of the week, casting announcements for future movies, and even the run time on a forthcoming film like The Odyssey—information likely known in advance to a decent number of people in Hollywood.
One possibility is for studios to join forces with the prediction markets in some way, in order to rein them in. Kalshi already has deals with CNN, CNBC, and Fox, and Polymarket signed an exclusive deal to integrate their prediction markets into the Golden Globes. Conversely, Cesternino wonders if a big studio like Paramount, home of Survivor, could “pull some strings with lawmakers to get the people who are running these sites to change it up when it comes to reality TV betting.” He knows that’s a long shot.
“I just don’t think that reality TV was built for this,” he adds. “The NBA can’t stop the officials for the NBA from acting on some of these impulses, so what are the chances that we’re stopping some very junior production assistants from ruining these programs? I know this is not an issue that any political figure is going to make their platform, but it’s super important to the fans of these shows.”
Ironically, the Love Island USA prediction markets were derailed on finale day by another disruptive force: AI. On Sunday afternoon, fans began posting screenshots of Google’s AI Overview making an early and authoritative announcement that Aniya Harvey and Carl Schmidt had won Love Island. When I searched for the results, the AI Overview even pointed me to a fake quote from the show’s host, Ariana Madix. After the episode aired and the real winners were crowned, some Kalshi gamblers who voted for Aniya and Carl voiced their confusion and dismay in the site’s comments. One commenter replied with a blunt, all-purpose response that feels more applicable with every passing day: “idk how you yall believed the internet.”
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