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Prediction market Polymarket offers some innovative parlay options. These are combined conditional markets that allow users to bet on multiple outcomes in a single contract.
Sportico this week wrote a scathing piece comparing Polymarket's parlay odds to those of traditional sportsbooks.
From Sportico:
Traditional parlays via sportsbooks allow people to build their own multi-step bets in which every element must come true for the user to win. These types of wagers now garner more than 70% all gross revenue for U.S. sportsbooks in some states.
Prediction markets? Not so much. Kalshi has so far abstained from offering sports parlays, and while international rival Polymarket provides them in Europe, that might not really matter from a revenue standpoint. Polymarket’s parlays don’t seem to move the needle in their current form.
The structure of prediction markets has prevented Polymarket from creating parlays in the open-ended way traditional sportsbooks can. Instead, the Shayne Coplan-led company predetermines parlay legs, restricting users to a “yes” or “no” outcome of a small combination of events happening that cannot be customized further.
Sportico offers s a point of reference whereby even routine non-parlayed MLB games, such as Tuesday night’s Rangers-Athletics matchup, beat entire fight cards in terms of “volume” by multiples of 10 or more, with just one of the Polymarket previous 10 sports-related parlay sets crossing $10,000 in volume.
But as noted above, Polymarket's parlays tend to be unique.
Case in point: Polymarket this week introduced an an Astronomer Divorce Parlay we profiled here at Gambling911.com.
How this Polymarket betting market will resolve:
Astronomer CEO Andy Byron was recently caught acting intimately with his CPO, Kristin Cabot, making it appear that each was cheating on their respective spouse. You can see more about that here: https://x.com/anuibi/status/1945785577158164954
This market will resolve to "Yes" if both of the following conditions prove true between July 17, and August 31, 2025 ET:
-Astronomer CEO Andy Byron or his wife announce their intention to divorce.
-Astronomer CPO Kristin Cabot or her husband announce their intention to divorce.Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".
Both conditions must occur to trigger a "Yes" resolution.
An announcement made within this market's timeframe the intention to divorce will be sufficient, regardless of whether the divorce later actually occurs, or whether the actual divorce occurs outside of the timeframe of this market.
The resolution source will be statements from Andy Byron, Kristin Cabot, their spouses, or their representatives, however a definitive consensus of credible media reporting may be considered.
This betting market did cross the $500,000 in "volume" threshold.
Dan Bernstein of Sportico notes that the “volume” metric is usually much higher than the amount of money actually wagered and that Polymarket’s parlays don’t seem to move the needle in their current form. Polymarket does not take bets from those in the US at the moment and its international parlay offerings have thus far witnessed meager returns.
In regard to the Astronomer Divorce parlay, Bernstein writes:
But even this parlay has a capped upside for Polymarket. It is no more profitable than a straightforward, single-event contract on a per-transaction basis. Prediction markets make money from trading fees, not the difference between money wagered and money paid out. In other words, the user failure rate sportsbooks enjoy, with parlay odds well in their favor, is irrelevant for prediction market platforms like Polymarket, where the number of users participating is the singular focus.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
