Until about two weeks ago, when Michael B. Jordan won the SAG Best Actor award, Timothée Chalamet was the overwhelming favorite to win the Best Actor Oscar. Suddenly, the price of Kalsi’s Chalamet contract dropped from 68 cents to 51 cents.
Chalamet remained a close favorite to win. However, on March 6, when comments that looked down on ballet and opera began to generate backlash, he fell into despair again. Jordan has been the frontrunner since March 7th.
For Karsi users, the closing of Oscar voting on March 5 means it was too late for the ballet controversy to influence the outcome. The atmosphere has changed and the market has adjusted accordingly.
Through March 10, traders had bought $48.4 million worth of Oscar contracts on Karsi, far exceeding the 2025 total of $29.6 million. Activity is also expected to pick up in the days before Sunday’s Oscar show, with the final amount expected to be significantly higher in 2026.
“This is definitely one of our fastest growing areas,” says Jack Thatch, a spokesperson for Calsi. “This is one of our high-profile private events. It’s going to be a huge event.”
As prediction markets explode, the days of $5 per entry office pool are becoming archaic. In January, Calci’s main rival, Polymarket, went all-in on the Golden Globes (owned by Penske Media Corporation, which also owns Variety). The Globes featured real-time odds on its television broadcasts, encouraging viewers to spend money to make the show more interesting. Some social media users thought the merger risked overshadowing the awards.
On Polymarket, as of Thursday, Best Picture alone had traded $30 million, more than the $5.3 million for the entire 2025 Best Picture race. “One Battle After Another” is the clear favorite on both platforms, coming in at about 75 cents. More than $100 million has been traded between the two parties so far in the Oscar deal.
Prediction markets have been around for several years, but they received a big boost in October 2024 when a federal appeals court allowed Kalsi to offer contracts for upcoming elections. Most pollsters considered the race a coin flip, but Calsi users were betting big on Donald Trump, and they were proven right.
Since then, the popularity of this market has skyrocketed. Major sports betting platforms DraftKings and FanDuel have launched their own prediction markets to participate in this effort.
DraftKings has been offering Oscar betting since 2019, when Oscar betting was only allowed in New Jersey. Gambling is regulated at the state level, and several other states have since approved Oscar gambling, including Michigan, Indiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Puerto Rico.
However, prediction markets are not considered gambling. These are regulated as futures contracts by the Federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As prediction platforms move toward sports, interest in traditional gambling is receding, leading to jurisdictional battles between state regulators and the CFTC. The Trump administration’s CFTC claims it has sole authority over prediction markets.
As the market grows in popularity, concerns about insider trading have arisen. None of these issues have yet arisen regarding the Oscars, and the winners themselves are famously a closely guarded secret, known only to PwC’s accountants.
But with contracts being provided for which celebrities will be in attendance and what words will be spoken on stage (“Ballet” sells for 62 cents on Polymarket), it’s not hard to imagine the potential for pranks.
Kalsi maintains a monitoring system similar to that used by stock exchanges that alerts us to suspicious trading activity.
“If the system flags something, we investigate it,” Sutch said. “And because we have everyone’s information, we can be like, ‘Oh, great. This person is Nicole Kidman’s best friend from high school,’ right? Surveillance systems and identity verification work well.”
Carsi forbids Academy members from trading Oscar contracts. Although the Academy does not have clear rules for this, it maintains standards of conduct that require a general level of professionalism and integrity in the voting process.
Carsi faced controversy in 2025 when he offered a deal over whether the Oscars’ television ratings would exceed the previous year’s viewership. Initial reports indicated that viewership was declining, so the deal was said to be a “no”. But the next day, additional data showed that ratings were actually increasing. Mr. Carsi criticized the New York Times, one of the authorities cited in the agreement, for not disclosing that the initial data was preliminary.
“This is just a weird edge case,” Thatch said. “It’s not really our fault. It’s not like we were wrong. And in fact, we have to abide by what’s written in the contract.”
Carsi is not offering an Oscar viewing deal this year.
DraftKings is by far the sports betting platform. But the company’s Oscar offering, which includes prediction markets as well as betting, has proven appealing to female users.
“We are more than just a sports company,” says Johnny Abello, Director of Race and Sports Operations at DraftKings. “We’re an entertainment company. Our customers tell us what they want and we deliver.”
Still, in terms of volume, it’s still a novelty: “Don’t in any way confuse this with what we’re going to do in an NFL game on Sunday. It’s not a joke,” Abello says.
