4 hours ago
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There’s a lot of holy rollers out there.
Bettors have placed millions of dollars in wagers on the papal conclave, and not just on who will be the next man to lead the Roman Catholic Church.
Online betting-prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi started taking bets on who will succeed Pope Francis within hours of his April 21 death, raking in a combined $17 million and counting, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But an event of this magnitude provides ample other betting opportunities, too, including over the papal name that the new pope will select, his nationality and even the number of rounds of voting that will be required before white smoke wafts through the Sistine Chapel chimney, signaling his selection.
The College of Cardinals will convene in Rome starting Wednesday to elect the next pontiff, a secretive process called the conclave. Eligible voting cardinals — of which there are 133 this time around — will be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel as they place secret ballots for their choice.
Polymarket data shows three leading contenders to be the next pope, with the odds narrowing slightly on the eve of the start of the conclave.
Vatican Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, 70, an Italian who oversees the conclave, has emerged as the 15-8 favorite to become the next pontiff — slightly better than 2-to-1 odds — according to the latest report by the sports-betting community platform OLBG.
Another cardinal considered a leading contender to assume the miter is Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, 67, of the Philippines, often called the “Asian Francis” for his liberal leanings. If elected, he would be the first Asian pope. OLBG places him as the second most likely next pontiff, with 5-2 odds.
Cardinal Peter Turkson has emerged as an underdog candidate who has nonetheless taken third place on Polymarket’s rankings, recently surging to around 15% likelihood to become pope, or roughly 11-2 odds.
Turkson, 76, of Ghana ran the Vatican’s office for Promoting Integral Human Development until Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the post in 2021 after an investigation into how the office was managed.
Also in the mix on Polymarket are Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, 69, of Italy; newly anointed Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 60, also of Italy, and Hungarian Cardinal Péter Erdő, 72 — with the three garnering 11%, 9% and 8% odds to be elected, respectively.
The outlet points out that betting odds on who will be elected pope have had mixed results in the recent past.
In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the favorite to win the papacy and wound up becoming Pope Benedict XVI.
But in 2013, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who would become Pope Francis, was given just a 4% chance of winning by UK bookmakers.
US elections have data points such as opinion polls and campaign debates that bettors can use to make more educated wagers, but the conclave, which takes place under the utmost secrecy, offers no such clues.
Leighton Vaughan Williams, an economics professor at the UK’s Nottingham Business School, said this constraint makes accurately betting on the outcome of the papal election much more of a crapshoot.
“Current betting odds, favoring cardinals like Parolin and Tagle, probably reflect general perceptions, media attention and public profile rather than special insider knowledge or highly accurate predictive insight,” he told the Journal.
The voting cardinals will convene inside the historic chapel to begin the first round of voting at 4:30 p.m. local time in Rome — with ballots being cast until 7:30 p.m.
If no candidate reaches the two-thirds majority threshold, the ballots will be burned with a chemical additive to produce black smoke, signaling they have not yet elected a pope as it rises from the chapel chimney.
Once a new pope is chosen, the ballots are burned with an additive that produces white smoke, at which point the man elected pope will make his debut appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica shortly after.
English (US)