Platforms that let you bet on the outcomes of future events have seen explosive growth recently.

Our economics correspondent Paul Salman explains how so-called prediction markets work and why they're so popular and controversial.

These days, you can pretty much bet anywhere, anytime, on anything, like a word Trevor Noah will say on camera.

Potato.

If you had me saying potato on the potty market, you just made a ton of money.

That was a joke.

No payoff for potato.

But people were betting on what words would be said at the Grammys, not unlike

betting on the weather. According to the prediction markets, at least the chance that New York

City gets over six inches of snow. We're talking 51% chance. And get this, if Cardi B would perform

in Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime extravaganza as to whether this was a performance was

hotly disputed by betters yes and no. Now, prediction markets are hardly new.

Prediction markets have been around since the 16th century, much more recently since around

1988 with the Iowa electronic markets. We had big political prediction markets running literally on the curb of Wall Street about elections back in the late 1800s.

That was then, but this is now.

Today's prediction markets are a completely different game.

One can essentially take positions across a host of different questions, including, but definitely not limited to politics.

Sports is by far the major category that is currently looked at, but certainly things like Oscars, who's going to be the next Federal Reserve Chair.

So it's really tapping into this appetite to grab people's attention, to do so in a way that is heavily influenced by social media.

So that has really resulted in a mass appeal in a way that prediction markets just didn't have before.

Wagering has skyrocketed on two dominant platforms, polymarket, which takes its bets in cryptocurrency,

and Kalshi in the week leading up to the Super Bowl,

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