MoviePass gambles on "entertainment speculation" to lure back users

Mogul wouldn’t work exactly like Kalshi or Polymarket, the online speculation marketplaces that seem to make millionaires of people who happen to know when Venezuela will be invaded, or who know exactly when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will finish her press conferences. At least not yet. In the future, Spikes wants “to build the first true hub for entertainment speculation.” For now, players would buy proprietary “Mogul Coin,” create a studio of chosen industry names, and earn points on their box office success. “You can know so much detail and data, and we see the only other place that is as data-rich is sports,” Spikes said. “Well, the closest business that has that level of data that people are predicting and guessing about every Friday is movies.”

Of course, sites like Kalshi, which, according to its CEO, aims to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion,” are already betting on the Academy Awards, Rotten Tomatoes scores, and even the opinions of specific critics. Gambling on box office returns, however, is still illegal in the U.S.—though we’re quite confident that will change, or one of these sites will just start doing it because there are no consequences for any bad behavior so long as the extremely wealthy get a little bit wealthier. Still, Spikes hopes Mogul will help turn entertainment speculators into MoviePass cardholders. He even had “a lot of fun,” prompting an AI slop video together for it. See you at the movies, speculators!

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