As the dust settles after Friday’s highly publicized wedding between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce in New York, the fortune of betting on inspirational weddings is now paying out to the millions who helped the pop icon’s big day beat the forecast markets.
The star-studded wedding, which took place on July 3 at Madison Square Garden, prompted speculative bets on everything from the date to the guest list and saw total trading volume of more than $6.3 million across major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Many of the bettors were from loyal Swift fans, most of them women who had been anticipating the day she got married for years and were confident enough about some details of the event that they entered the prediction market for the first time.
Some of these details became clear as the day approached. Madison Square Garden contract prices were initially lower than those in Rhode Island, where Swift has a huge home, before rising to more than 80 cents on the dollar before being set at “yes” after it was officially announced late Friday that Swift and Kelsey would marry at the square. The writing was on the wall when barricades and private tents were set up outside the park, and the New York Police Department shared plans for a massive event in midtown Manhattan, which media confirmed was Swift’s wedding.
On the fashion front, forecasters saw huge returns when 60.5% of traders correctly bet on a custom Dior dress; Competing contract options were famous design houses Vera Wang and Louis Vuitton. (Maybe they were winners Hollywood Reporter Readers?) Those who predicted that Swift’s childhood best friend Abigail Anderson-Berard would be her bridesmaid — a high of 85 percent — were left out; Those who bet on “no bridesmaids” pocketed the winnings, with the couple eschewing traditional roles at the wedding.
But those who bet that Kelsey’s brother, Jason Kelsey, would be best man – with a whopping 94 per cent – got their paychecks, as the couple kept their siblings close by on their big day. Taylor’s younger brother, Austin Swift, stood with the singer as her official “man of honor.”
The guest list stakes were a mixed bag. Many of the couple’s close friends — Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, Patrick Mahomes, and the Haim sisters — attended the event as VIP guests but were not present at the wedding. Blake Lively, who was a close friend of Swift, did not attend, a surprise that led to more speculation about the state of their friendship and whether she was invited to the big event.
Moderated by Adam Sandler, the reception turned into a once-in-a-lifetime concert that saw Stevie Nicks and Paul McCartney perform for the crowd.
