Online Betting Markets Get Dark With Pope’s Future Uncertain
As wagers about Pope Francis pop up on prediction-market site Polymarket, some users wonder how far is too far for betting on hypotheticals.
Illustration: Maggie Cowles for Bloomberg
When reports emerged last weekend that Pope Francis had been hospitalized in critical condition, thousands of people gathered at the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square to pray.
The mood was a bit different on peer-to-peer betting website Polymarket, where bettors had pegged the odds of a new pope before 2026 at 76% (as of 3:45 p.m. US East Coast time on Friday, a few hours after the Vatican reported that Francis’s condition had worsened). The site’s available bets include not only the likelihood of a new pope, but which country the next pope will come from and who it might be. Wagers on “New Pope in 2025?” have generated just over $420,000 on Polymarket as of Friday afternoon.