Luana Lopes Lara recently became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire at 29. Her company, Kalshi, hit an $11 billion valuation in six years by doing something deceptively simple: letting people bet on real-world events as they happen.
Elections. Interest rate changes. Even celebrity divorces. All unfolding live, with odds shifting every second based on what people actually believe will happen. People are hungry to give their opinion, even in areas they aren’t geographically connected to, or have no business getting involved with. One could argue that it’s a fundamental side of human nature, as old as the first cave-dwelling ancestors.
Kalshi didn’t just create a market, they created a storytelling engine where opinions shape the narrative in real time. Fans aren’t passive viewers anymore; they’re active participants putting their money where their mouth is, and that investment creates content worth watching.
What’s happening beyond?
Prediction markets like Kalshi prove that invested data has huge value, way beyond the money that’s put in. Smart analysts are using these markets to track emerging trends because participants have skin in the game. When you’re risking your own cash, you think harder. You’re more honest. You reveal what you actually believe, not what sounds good in a YouGov poll where there’s zero jeopardy in the response. People are hungry for live data. They want to see odds shift, outcomes change, and momentum build in real time. It’s the same with live events. Despite being there, fans want to see what’s happening beyond what their eyes can catch.
Real-time data visualisation turns anonymous crowds into known, engaged communities. The infrastructure is here. What’s missing is the mindset shift: treating engaged attendees the way Kalshi treats its traders. As people whose active participation creates compounding value, not just a passing distraction.
Put your money where your mouth is
YouTube figured this out years ago with SuperChats. During live streams, viewers pay to elevate their comments, creating a secondary layer of content that drives the conversation. Creators respond to those paid interactions, which generates more engagement, which brings more SuperChats. It’s a loop that funds itself.
Kalshi built a live market version. Every trade is a public vote of confidence. Every odds shift tells a story. The platform doesn’t just show you what might happen, it shows you what thousands of invested people believe will happen, updating every second based on their actual money.
Activating that attention
Opinions become editorial content. You’re not just showing “Adam from Manchester thinks City will win”, you’re showing that 10,000 people just shifted £2 million in that direction in the last five minutes. That’s a narrative. Tension is something sponsors want to be aligned with.
For live events, this changes what’s possible. Audience-generated predictions, real-time sentiment shifts, and invested opinions don’t just fill screen time, they create sponsorable content that writes itself. The crowd becomes the story that brands can attach themselves to.
Case study – Read how Dizplai collaborated with Sky Sports to create the Viewers’ Verdict, a live interactive scorecard housed within the Sky Sports app.
