If you still consider the Web3 prediction market as "niche chain gambling", you might be overlooking something that could change the future landscape of iGaming: in Polymarket, 48.45% of the betting volume comes from the political market, almost on par with sports (51.24%).
According to a research paper from the University of Hong Kong and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Political Bias in Web3 Gambling: Decoding the Interaction Between Politics and Profit Motives, a reality the industry has never seriously faced is revealed:
The most valuable players in Web3 gambling are not arbitrage parties or crypto speculators, but a group of political enthusiasts willing to bet on their "beliefs."
And they are precisely the "new type of super-users" that traditional gambling has struggled to reach for decades.
💻Why can political markets explode to this scale in Web3 gambling?
In traditional gambling, political markets have always been marginal—few players, difficult odds, long event cycles.
But in the Web3 world, it instantly becomes mainstream, even splitting the market with sports, with a very clear logic behind it: political enthusiasts are naturally more "motivated".
Sports fans bet on teams emotionally; political enthusiasts bet with a worldview, stance, and identity behind them.
This is a naturally high-motivation, high-engagement user group. The emotional value of their bets far exceeds the monetary value: they bet to "prove they are right," even at a loss.
Studies show that many political players continue to bet despite long-term losses. Because their goal is not profit, but emotion, expression, and belief validation.
This is almost non-existent in traditional gambling.
Unlike posting on social media, betting to "express an opinion" involves paying money, which is a more intense action. This forms a new type of market that traditional gambling cannot replicate: betting is also a form of self-expression. It can also become a capital for multiple public boasts—not only is the opinion correct, but they even make money from it.
🔥Why are these players more valuable than the gambling industry imagines?
Political players have several characteristics in the data that we can understand their value at a glance:
✔️ More willing to continue betting (super strong repurchase)
Because political events have long cycles and multiple nodes: primaries, debates, rallies, polls, final sprints, real-time voting, each piece of news can trigger a betting action.
Sports and slots have a "fatigue period," but politics does not.
✔️ More prone to addiction, and more likely to stay
A key point: belief-based players are more likely to incur "sunk costs" than entertainment-based players.
They continue to buy more after losses, wait for the next election to recoup, and when one election ends, they move on to the next political news.
They do not disappear like sports players when the season ends, nor switch platforms like slot players after losing today.
They fluctuate with political news, and in politics, news is never lacking.
✔️ More sticky, more social, more willing to discuss
Political enthusiasts like to discuss, argue, and look for companions in the community, even pulling others to bet together to form resonance.
This gives the political prediction market a natural viral effect.
Therefore, political enthusiasts are: 💰 high conversion, high retention, high repurchase, strong emotion-driven "super user group".
🟥So the question arises: how can political enthusiasts be diverted or converted to general gambling? This is the most concerned value point of the industry.
The report data also provides the answer: through behavioral quantification.
Web3's on-chain behavior has an advantage that traditional gambling cannot replicate: every "betting behavior" can form a permanent data point.
Including: historical betting direction, betting amount, timing of bets, sensitivity to fluctuations, emotional triggers, changes in risk preference, arbitrage tendencies, and contrarian betting probabilities.
These data can not only build a "Political Bias Scoring (PBLS)" but can be used to construct an entire iGaming system's "player behavior portrait system".
Therefore, first, political markets can be used as an entry point → sports markets as a continuation.
The overlap between political enthusiasts and sports fans is very high, and sports markets are the easiest to transition to "entertainment-driven" scenarios.
According to the data, once users get used to betting on Polymarket: as long as they see a 7% fluctuation space for arbitrage, they will bet on sports. This is the most common.
Second, using on-chain behavior quantification → precise recommendations for slots, Crash, and card games.
A point that traditional casinos cannot achieve: clearly knowing which user is a "sensual player" or an "arbitrage player."
And according to big data coordination, it can be summarized:
Frequent contrarian bets → prefer high fluctuation Crash/Aviator
High-frequency small bets → suitable for slots
Likes long-term holdings → suitable for sports parlays
Frequent switching of odds → inclined towards poker or strategic card games
Profit maximization type → may be a long-term valuable player of Sportsbook
This is the advantage of Web3: the player's betting history = AI's recommendation system training.
48.45% of the political market's participation is not accidental, it is a signal: Web3 is cultivating "political enthusiasts" into "super gambling players". For the industry, the future lies in who can first incorporate these high-motivation, high-stickiness, strong expression desire, and loss-tolerant "belief-based players" into their ecosystem, and through on-chain behavior portraits, gradually convert them into sports players, Crash players, slot players, card game players, ultimately forming a complete gambling lifecycle management.
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