Dildos rained down on “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver at the end of his prediction markets deep dive, which aired Sunday.
The NSFW finale was a nod to a recent trend at WNBA games, where multiple matches have been disrupted by fans throwing sex toys onto the court mid-play — in some cases linked to attempts to influence trades on fast-growing platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, where users can wager on almost anything.
Oliver explored what he described as the “really dark” practice of betting on outcomes of war, the companies’ aggressive marketing pushes, and his twin annoyances: their insistence that they are not gambling sites and that they are “incredibly important” for accurately predicting the future.
He also slammed their paid partnerships with news organizations such as Dow Jones, celebrity.land, CNBC and Fox News, as well as their ties to Donald Trump’s White House — most notably through his son, Donald Trump Jr., who serves as an adviser to both companies.
Oliver revealed that trades had even been sought on a previous episode of his own show when it aired in February, noting that audience members would have had an advantage given the program is taped days in advance.
He argued there is “something so grim about these sites turning every aspect of our lives into a bet because, sure, money can be won on them — but in that happening, something also gets lost: specifically, a society where things aren’t only weighed in financial terms and where people engage with news for what it means to human beings, not just because they have $50 riding on it.”
“When something unexpected happens in the world, it would be really nice not to have to automatically question whether it’s only because someone is trying to move a market,” he continued.
Oliver then promised his audience he would “never do anything because someone online placed a bet on it.”
“Once you have that trust, you can feel secure in the knowledge that if a dildo ever lands on this desk, it’s not because someone had a secret wager on it — it’s because we weren’t sure how to get out of a 32-minute segment on a quasi-legal gambling industry,” he added.
Cue the avalanche of dildos.
Watch the full segment here:
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