As Tribal Council was winding down Wednesday night, and Jonathan Young was making a pretty compelling case to win the $2 million prize, I pulled up Kalshi and put $1 on him (at 1¢) to win. Moments later Jeff Probst would announce Aubry Bracco as the winner — a fate that was spoiled months before on Kalshi (and reddit message boards). If there’s such a thing as a wire-to-wire Survivor winner, it was Aubry:

We knew it. Dane and I talked about it ad nauseum on The Antenna. But there were a couple blips along the way that opened the door slightly for a sliver of hope – notably, in the “who will be eliminated this week?” markets, the early, very strong favorites were wrong. They corrected by the morning of the show’s airing (someone had obviously seen the episode and put money on the actual boot), but it introduced the possibility that maybe there was some bad information out there – AND WHAT ELSE COULD THEY BE WRONG ABOUT? Plus, this morning’s general reaction online is that Aubry was not a good winner. She was saved by two massive blunders in the same episode by Ozzy (he told her about his alliances and then failed to play his idol at Tribal Council). Jonathan, meanwhile, masterminded votes, picked fights to get Dee riled up in front of everyone, caused Stephenie to take heat for a plan that was his idea. As I watched, it felt like maybe there was something there and – the night after the Knicks flipped a market on its head – maybe Jonathan really did win this thing.

But no. Aubry crushed him, 8 votes to 3. 

In a $32 million market, a player who was 80-90%-plus for most of the season won. And of course someone knew. Votes were cast and put into an urn last year. Producers, editors, network executives, contestants – the show passed through so many hands and edit bays OF COURSE people knew and OF COURSE they put money on the winner they had known ahead of time. Kalshi and Polymarket get black eyes for having the market, but it’s not their fault – buyers have to have sellers here. Aubry dipped to 71% a month ago (April 10 to be exact) and people could’ve jumped on that (those who knew likely jumped back in) – but at the time it was hard to see how she could win. Even today, looking back on it all, it’s hard to see how she won outside of what most people are saying:

But this is more about lessons learned today! And the lesson I learned is very specific: just watch Survivor, do not wager on it. Or maybe it’s: don’t even watch Survivor anymore, it has lost its edge. 

One bad assumption I made that I can learn nothing from was buying140 shares of Ozzy at 2¢ before the season began:

The thinking was if he made it far, his price would nudge up and I could sell it at 30¢ or whatever. Ozzy did make it far. He won challenges, he had an immunity idol, he had a strong alliance. But his price never budged after that January initial spike. This is not the graph of someone who looked like – to an unspoiled Survivor watcher – he could possibly win the whole thing: 

That is a graph of a giant market where people know the outcome. And watching the show and watching this markets had a giant disconnect of “what will happen” right up until the very end. 

It was a bad market to play in unless you knew someone connected to the show. Aubry should’ve been 10-20% all season until the final few weeks. I don’t blame Kalshi or Polymarket for this; I blame myself. No more wagering on pre-recorded shows!

And for those of you wondering, here’s Kalshi’s head of enforcement:

All signs pointed to Gallrein riding this “Trump endorsement” wave to victory after Bill Cassidy lost his primary days earlier…and I ignored it. I even dedicated a full newsletter to the Massie market. But silly me! I thought Cassidy was simply not a good candidate and his opponent was better; Massie was popular in his own party and a great candidate, while Gallrein was generally an unknown quantity – skipping debates, having few public appearances, and even the Pete Hegseth endorsement press conference the day before the election was attended by “a few dozen supporters.”

And then Gallrein smoked Massie. By almost 10 points.

I had long ago learned the lesson on not equating national/Twitter popularity with local politics. Our first newsletter reminisced on Beto O’Rourke, for instance. This wasn’t that (but it’s still an important lesson to note!). This is just a bunch of Republicans listening to whatever Trump says. It happened in Indiana with the candidates who refused to redistrict. It happened in Louisiana with a senator who voted to impeach Trump (and then probably did further damage by then running to Trump’s side after). And it happened to Massie. Later on Tuesday, when Trump endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the Texas runoff, the markets went bananas for Paxton:

Lesson learned? Whoever Trump endorses next in a Republican primary? Put something down on them. Or sit it out because the market will jump to 90 the moment it happens. 

This one hurts. And maybe I just wanted it to be good, but the movie supposedly had it all: Jon Favreau writing and directing, the first Star Wars movie in theaters in seven years, a great main character, the timeline was perfect (5 years after Return of the Jedi) for nostalgic vibes and surprise cameos. 

I thought it had a shot at 90+ on the Tomatometer. Four Star Wars movies hit that number, including Episode VIII, which a ton of people hated. But now, on the eve of its official release, The Mandalorian and Grogu is sitting at 61% – with an even-worse 54 on Metacritic. A 61% still puts it ahead of The Phantom Menace, but below Solo. This is not Star Wars magic. And this was their best shot, with Jon Favreau at the helm. I haven’t seen it yet, I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. But the Rotten Tomatoes score was supposed to be this movie’s saving grace, as it had little buzz (there’s been a repeated online trope of “there’s a new Star Wars movie coming out and nobody seems to care or know” for a couple months now) and the box office is supposed to be okay, but not blockbuster-level. 

Lesson Learned: Don’t touch Star Wars – or anything Disney – for a while. No matter who directs or writes it. And wait for it to come out online. 

We’ll take the occasional Ls from now on, but it’s bound to happen with these longshot stands we take (they make for better newsletters than “here’s a great 70 cent play for you!”). As long as we’re learning something (anything!) along the way, we’ll continue to evolve with the emerging markets space. YAY.