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Well, they have money on the line.
Yeah, and if I had to guess, they've hedged their bets and they have money on both sides of the line.
Don't know shit abt gambling but if you can do that and not lose money doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of gambling
It's what bookies do.
They set the payouts and take bets from both sides so that the losers pay for the winners.
After a little work it's just math and turning away bets / adjusting payouts when you're already too heavy on that side.
And your profit comes from putting your finger on the scale.
In that it makes it not a gamble anymore yes, but if you get your math correct there's a way you can at least break even no matter what, especially if it's not a true gamble and there's fundamentals behind your bet to study.
Of course If you're doing this much work it's no longer fun, so it's definitely not appealing to those who like gambling purely for the thrill.
Do they?
Or are they just Republicans who are losing money on purpose to make it appear that the odds favor Trump?
We're talking about Tech-bros and Cryptocoin-bros here. (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, DJT SPAC bullshittery, etc. etc.). These are people who are 100% willing to (spend other people's money) to pump up fake metrics.
These are literally the same people who are willing to lose money on meme-stocks for the lulz. They don't actually care about making money.
I'm not sure that being perceived as the "favorite" is something that either party wants at this point. Being the favorite comes with a bunch of negatives.
My point is that "betting markets" are bullshit.
You assume that everyone in the "betting market" is actually trying to make money. When in fact, a large number of people are doing it for the lulz, and a minor number of people (ex: campaigns) are actively trying to spend money to manipulate public opinion.
If I make a bet with you, person to person, then it might just be putting my money where my mouth is. If I think Harris will win, then I offer you $20 if Trump wins, and if Harris wins then you give me $30. (That's exactly 3:2 odds there, which is what 40% odds of winning should work out to.)
The people making the odds--the bookmakers--are absolutely in it for the money. They need to set the odds so that the overall amounts bet on each campaign nearly balance each other out, with the excess amount going to the bookie as profit. If the bookies don't set the odds correctly, then they risk taking enormous losses. Even if the people are betting for teh lulz, the bookies are deadly serious because they're going to have to payout millions of dollars in bets. Campaigns might spend money to manipulate the betting markets, but given the size of the markets, that's probably a fairly small change either way, and most book makers that take bets on elections are also going to be following polls closely.
Keep in mind that the last, best odds for Trump to beat Clinton, going into election night in 2016, were 29%.
And I can make bets to about $5000ish for the lulz. And I HAVE made lulzy bets using call options for shits and giggles just to mess with coworkers and their opinions on the stock market.
Because I have enough wealth that even $5000 doesn't affect me, win or lose. I'm not even that rich, I just know how much is in my lulz spending allocation per month.
An actual millionaire or billionaire will be able to do the same lulz bet at the 50-Million range.
Small amounts of money is no object to me, where small is ~single digit thousands for me. Richer people within my family bought a house all in cash the other day, because fuck it it's within our capabilities and we don't sweat small amounts of money.
At my lifestyle (and for everyone richer than me), money is primarily conspicuous spending to show how rich we are to each other. Basic needs are already handled so it's all lulz money here on out.
Your assumption that $30 would be even an ounce of my thought is hugely mistaken. That's just fucking nothing, it's well below the threshold that I bother thinking of anymore.
Instead, I know that people like you actually care about money. I can manipulate you because my care for money is so much less than you and seed the odds in the favor. Ex: I can pretend I'm sure of something, throw $5000 bet into some call options or put options to pretend I'm serious (when really I don't care), because I know that $5000 is serious money to someone like you.
It's not a polite thing to do, I don't like it when other rich people manipulate poorer people like this. But it's something within my capabilities.
...The point is so far over your head that I'm going to assume that you're willfully ignoring it.
You might--might--be able to manipulate the odds with a single bookie. But most bookies also cap bets from any single person or source, because, hey, it turns out that they actually know what they're doing, since you don't stay in business long as a bookie if you don't. Could you pay people to make sock puppet accounts? Sure. But the number of sock puppet accounts you would need to do that--and the number of bank accounts--mean that it would be noisy to do. (You could give 10,000 people each $500 to wager, but I don't think that all 10k would actually place the bet, and I still don't think that would be enough to move markets significantly.)
I think you underestimate the amount of money that's involved here. The sports betting market in the US is worth about $13B, and I would guess--not bet--that the political market is likely around $1B or so, although it's going to be peaking in November, rather than spread out over the year.
I can, and have, bet on things where someone is, or acts like they are, sure of themselves, and I know for a fact that they're full of shit. I've won every single one of those bets, because gambling is a tax on people that can't do math.
You're the one ignoring my point.
Rich people do not give a shit about money. Especially lulzy bets we make on the internet.
I can, and have, bet on things because I don't give a shit. Just to bully someone else out of their money and to back down.
Cool. Elon Musk is donating $50 Million to Trump per month. A single Billionaire like Musk can manipulate a small market of $1B bookies quite easily.
Look up the size of these political donations. All of that money is "wasted", Billionaires don't expect political donations to come back and give them money. Its just a way of expressing support in rich people culture.
How, exactly, would he do that? Given the way that banking laws work, and given that book makers limit bets from any single person, any way he was trying to circumvent their limits would be blatantly obvious.
Blatantly false. Billionaires largely expect the politicians they support to enact policies that they either agree with, or policies that will help them accumulate more wealth/retain more wealth. Musk gives money to Trump because Trump cuts Musk's taxes, while Biden (and now Harris) have been talking about changing tax policies so that corporations have fewer loopholes. (Plus, the NLRB under Biden has brought a number of civil actions against Tesla.) It is very much a quid pro quo kind of situation, not just an 'attaboy'.
"Here's $50 Million bucks. Go make Donald Trump's odds slightly better in a way that makes you lose upto $40-million bucks. Keep $10 million for yourself"
Also, don't put it on the books. This is a gift.