Prediction market platforms allow people to place bets on a staggering array of outcomes — from the US-Iran conflict to the winner of the World Cup to who Taylor Swift’s bridesmaids will be. Add to that list betting on wildfires.
High Country News recently reported that Polymarket, the world’s biggest prediction market platform, accepted bets on the Palisades Fire as it broke out in January 2025 in Los Angeles County. The fire killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures. High Country News also reported on the launch of another prediction market earlier this year that is currently accepting only simulated bets on wildfires in California.
Betting on where and when a wildfire starts, and on how it grows, raises ethical and safety concerns. A user on the prediction platform could, for example, engage in arson to score big on a placed bet. The federal and state fire officials High Country News spoke to rejected claims that bets placed on wildfires could aid their wildfire forecasting and monitoring efforts.
High Country News correspondent Kylie Mohr joins us to share more details and what it means for Oregon as state officials prepare for a potentially destructive wildfire season.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Prediction market platforms allow people to place bets on a staggering array of outcomes – from the U.S.-Iran conflict to the winner of the World Cup to Taylor Swift’s bridesmaids. You can add wildfire behavior to that list.
High Country News recently reported that Polymarket, the world’s biggest prediction market platform, accepted more than $1 million of bets on the Palisades and Eaton fires. Those fires killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 homes and other buildings. Betting on where and when a wildfire will start or how it will grow raises major ethical and safety concerns.
Kylie Mohr is an award-winning freelance journalist and High Country News correspondent. She wrote about this, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Kylie Mohr: Hi, thanks so much for having me again.
Miller: All right, so more than $1 million in bets just for these two fires on this one platform. What kinds of bets are people actually making?
Mohr: People are making bets on both wildfire behavior and impact, weighing in on questions about how fires will grow, how long they will last and how much they’ll destroy.
Miller: I mentioned $1.2 million on these two fires on this one platform, Polymarket. Do you have a sense for the overall scale of wildfire betting?
Mohr: It’s a bit hard to say, and it’s something that I definitely am going to keep looking into. I think that the Los Angeles fires that you just mentioned, those were definitely the most high profile. And I think next time there’s a megafire that similarly captures national attention, whether that be the Lahaina fires or the Paradise Fire in the past, I’ll be paying really close attention to that to see if prediction market sites put it up there again.
Miller: What did you hear about this kind of betting from survivors of those particular fires?
Mohr: The survivors were predictably pretty horrified. They told me that they were flabbergasted, that it was really crass, heartless and morally reprehensible to gamble on their fate and the fate of their communities. They were just shocked to hear that this had even happened and that it was legal.
Miller: I went onto Polymarket just to sort of poke around and see what else, in a kind of similar vein, people are betting on right now. I found bets on hurricanes, on volcanoes and on tornadoes – that’s probably an incomplete list of natural disasters. How are wildfires, or maybe I should say, are wildfires different?
Mohr: Yeah, they are different. And you’re right, betting on weather and betting on natural disasters isn’t exactly new. We’ve been doing that as humans long before prediction markets became a thing. But what sets wildfire apart is the ability for humans to both start it and, in some ways, also control it. So that creates perverse incentives for arson, and it opens up the possibility of insider trading as well. That just isn’t true when you’re talking about hurricanes and tornadoes.
Miller: Does CAL FIRE, the huge California state wildfire fighting organization, let their employees or contractors bet on wildfires?
Mohr: No, they actually don’t, and it’s part of broader restrictions. So all California state employees are actually banned from betting on any predictive market topic, and that just includes wildfires too.
Miller: Has betting like this happened for Oregon wildfires?
Mohr: That is a great question and one that I can’t answer with full certainty. If anyone listening has seen evidence of this or has actually bet on an Oregon wildfire outcome, I would love to hear from them and learn more. I didn’t find any evidence of that, but that’s not to say that it hasn’t happened or it is happening.
Miller: But you found that wildfire betting is not just on these general betting platforms where you can bet on just about anything in the world. There is now a website fully dedicated to this. It’s called Wyldfyre. If you want to spell it, both I’s are Y’s. So can you give us a sense for what this is?
Mohr: Yeah, I was pretty interested when I stumbled across this website in my reporting. So Wyldfyre purports to be the first California wildfire-specific prediction market, and it encourages people to trade on what fire does next in the state using “play money,” with real money coming soon but not currently on the platform. So you can bet if 100+ new acres will burn in any county or city in the state during this month, and that will continue throughout the summer and throughout the fire season.
Miller: Were you able to find out anything about the folks behind this new site?
Mohr: Not much. It was really opaque. I couldn’t determine the owner of the IP address or track them down, despite a lot of sleuthing. But after my story was published, they added some terms of service to their website that includes an email address that I just found yesterday. So, I plan to reach out.
Miller: Wyldfyre, this new site, they make a bold claim on their website. They write this: “Prediction markets harness the wisdom of crowds to surface what models and satellites might miss. Wyldfyre turns collective intelligence into better wildfire forecasting, one trade at a time.” So in other words, no, this is not just about fun. We are making the world a better place because all these people are betting. And as they bet, the market will sort of sort out, with the wisdom of the crowd, what is going to happen with wildfires better than the existing models.
What did you hear about this claim from actual fire agencies?
Mohr: So, CAL FIRE and the Forest Service both said unequivocally, they do not use prediction market data, nor do they plan to. A spokesperson for the Forest Service even said that a system that ties financial gain to wildfire outcomes is not compatible with their mission.
Miller: The sense I get is that they’re also arguing that they’re forecasting methods – setting aside the gross ethical questions and betting on people’s lives or livelihoods – are actually better than the theoretical wisdom of the fire-betting crowd. What are those official methods?
Mohr: Fire agencies use scientifically-driven, quite complex software models that use data on everything from the weather, the vegetation, the topography, and a bunch of other ways that you can predict a wildfire spread in order to model a fire and support resources and their strategy accordingly.
Miller: Are there any regulations for what people can bet on? As a reminder, you had said that at the state level in California, for example, there are prohibitions for state employees. But I mean for everybody else.
Mohr: Yeah, it’s really patchy right now because there’s kind of a turf war, if you will, going on between individual states and the federal government when it comes to who can regulate prediction markets and what, if anything, they can do. So prediction markets, they’re legal in Oregon, but they aren’t subject to Oregon state gambling laws or gambling taxes. And in Oregon, there really aren’t regulations for what people can bet on. You just have to be 18, and if you’re running for office, you can’t bet on your own race.
Miller: Is anyone working right now to prevent wildfire betting?
Mohr: Not that I’m aware of. Attempts to rein in prediction market betting both from states and the federal government have really focused on keeping politicians and their staffers from betting on things that they might have inside knowledge of, as well as potentially banning bets on topics like assassinations, wars and acts of terrorism. But so far, wildfire has not come up in those discussions.
Miller: Kylie, thanks very much.
Mohr: Thanks for having me again.
Miller: Kylie is a correspondent for High Country News. We have a link to her recent article about wildfire bets on prediction market platforms on our website.
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