The sex toys are a red herring

Green dildos aren't the real story. Sports' latest ugly trend is more about Polymarket, memecoins, and the financialization of virality.

By now you’ve likely heard that neon green dildos have been thrown onto the court at multiple WNBA games in the past week. The trend has drawn outcry from players and executives, encouragement from some conservative talking heads, and swift action from local law enforcement.

It also quickly caught the attention of Polymarket, one of the biggest prediction markets on the internet. A competitor of Kalshi, which has skirted local gambling laws and regulators to offer a form of nation-wide sports betting, Polymarket offers similar products but in a more garish way. It was operating in the U.S., then pulled out in 2022 amid pressure from the U.S. Government.¹ Now it’s planning its re-entry, though plenty of Americans currently use the service via VPN.

Polymarket’s product and marketing approach appears to hinge primarily on the ultimate digital maxim: lean into whatever the internet is talking about. And this week, some of that discourse focused on fans throwing sex toys at WNBA games.

Polymarket was quick to react, rushing up a series of markets about the likelihood of more incidents. On Tuesday, the site’s sports-focused X account posted nine times about it. On Wednesday, there were 13 more, including one announcing “dildo dailies” and another touting the wagers of a “professional dildo trader.” For the Wednesday night game between the Aces and Valkyries, the account gleefully pointed out that, on its platform, more had been wagered on the possibility of additional sex toys being thrown than on the game itself.

It’s become impossible, in my opinion, to talk about the WNBA’s sex toy problem without talking about Polymarket and the various ways the internet now offers financial reward for viral stunts. In fact, it seems likely that the tee-hee potty humor of the objects themselves are distracting from the actual problems here—that some corners of the internet are not just actively encouraging fans to throw objects at professional basketball players, but simultaneously allowing them to bet money on it happening.

There’s an obvious way in which those two things could combine for shameless opportunists. In fact, it might have already happened. On Tuesday evening at 5:30 PM, an anonymous Polymarket user bet $13,044 that a dildo would be thrown at a WNBA game that night. A few hours later, it happened. The user—perhaps even the thrower—pocketed more than $6,000.

So much has already been written about the gamification of modern sports fandom. Sportsbooks, daily fantasy operators, rewards programs, even the jumbotron during games are all pushing fans toward other ways to sweat what happens on the field. It’s no longer enough to want your team to win or your favorite player to succeed. You also have to have some other simultaneous, selfish action of some sort.

Polymarket and Kalshi are pushing those boundaries to new heights. DraftKings and FanDuel operate in heavily regulated ways. Fan reward programs offer relatively low stakes. The new prediction markets often operate outside both of those constraints. That’s how you get $180,000 in volume on a Polymarket offering on whether another sex toy would be thrown by Aug. 10. (Ed’s note: It was. There were two last night in Chicago alone.).

Polymarket is capitalizing on the internet virality of an act that appears to have started with a group that was trying to… capitalize on internet virality! According to The Athletic and others, at least some of these incidents, including the original toss, were perpetrated by a group looking to boost the value of an internet memecoin.² It’s hard to see where the snake’s head ends and the tail begins.

Since we’re talking about prediction markets, here’s a prediction of my own: the crass in-your-face marketing may backfire on Polymarket. Up until last week, I thought Kalshi and its peers were likely on a smooth path towards easy growth. The mess at the CFTC, which technically regulates these future markets, and the direct way in which the Trump family benefits financially from the industry’s growth seemed to make its future success a fait accompli.

But if anything is going to slow this gravy train, it’ll be tasteless marketing and social posts that openly encourage wagering on sex toys being thrown at pro athletes. Don’t be surprised if you see that “daily dildos” X post on a posterboard during a Capitol Hill hearing at some point in the future. Maybe it’s for the better.

Jacob’s ⚡ Take: If there’s any good to come out of all this stupidity, I hope it’s a new, shared vernacular to describe individuals hijacking sporting events—or any public space—for attention or financial gain. They’re giant dildos to me.

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

1. Polymarket’s U.S. exit came alongside a settlement with the CFTC. The company was also fined $1.4 million for offering unregistered contracts, among other things.

2. If you don’t know what a memecoin is, first off, congrats. But if it helps, it’s a specific cryptocurrency, generally tied to a viral online joke. They can surge in value based off nothing more than vibes, then quickly become valueless.