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Dildos rained down on \u201cLast Week Tonight\u201d host John Oliver at the end of his prediction markets deep dive, which aired Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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 \u2014 in some cases linked to attempts to influence trades on fast-growing platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, where users can wager on almost anything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Oliver explored what he described as the \u201creally dark\u201d practice of betting on outcomes of war, the companies\u2019 aggressive marketing pushes, and his twin annoyances: their insistence that they are not gambling sites and that they are \u201cincredibly important\u201d for accurately predicting the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
He also slammed their paid partnerships with news organizations such as Dow Jones, celebrity.land<\/a>, CNBC and Fox News<\/a>, as well as their ties to Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s White House \u2014 most notably through his son, Donald Trump Jr., who serves as an adviser to both companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He argued there is \u201csomething so grim about these sites turning every aspect of our lives into a bet because, sure, money can be won on them \u2014 but in that happening, something also gets lost: specifically, a society where things aren\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhen something unexpected happens in the world, it would be really nice not to have to automatically question whether it\u2019s only because someone is trying to move a market,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Oliver then promised his audience he would \u201cnever do anything because someone online placed a bet on it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOnce you have that trust, you can feel secure in the knowledge that if a dildo ever lands on this desk, it\u2019s not because someone had a secret wager on it \u2014 it\u2019s because we weren\u2019t sure how to get out of a 32-minute segment on a quasi-legal gambling industry,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cue the avalanche of dildos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Watch the full segment here:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n