The art world, as much as we love it, has never been accused of lacking opportunities for speculation. But apparently “there’s room for one more, honey.”
On Wednesday, Artnet announced that it had partnered with Kalshi, the prediction-market platform that lets users bet on everything from election results to sporting events. Artnet will become Kalshi’s official art partner, helping select markets and supplying the auction data used to determine which bets pay out.
The reaction on Instagram was swift and, let’s say, not particularly kind. On Artnet’s post announcing the partnership, Marcella Zimmerman, the CEO of arts PR firm Digital Counsel, wrote, “Is it April 1?” Curator and art historian Joshua Decter wrote, “This is truly pathetic. Kalshi is basically a gambling platform (‘prediction market’) that is under investigation by regulators who may prosecute the company, but yeah, @artnet is doubling-down because the art system isn’t banal enough in 2026.”
By Thursday, several more prominent art figures had weighed in on the partnership on Instagram. In a “micro-essay,” Jasmine Wahi, cofounder and co-director of Project for Empty Space, wrote that while she didn’t believe art and commerce were “incompatible,” the partnership shows “how easily some can reduce art to an asset to liquidate when it’s convenient for them, with little regard for the public good or the harm to artists.” In an Instagram story, Gabriel Allred, an artist with 67,000 followers who regularly posts video essays on contemporary art, called the partnership a “disappointment” and said it “is ripe for media-driven market manipulation.” Artnet News’s own columnist Kenny Schachter posted a satirical image of himself in a casino surrounded by artworks, with the tagline “Kenny x Kalshi” and the caption “They actually asked me to help them shill it online. Imagine that.”
The partnership comes seven months after Artnet, the auction-data and media company, announced a merger with the online art brokerage Artsy. The combined company is led by chairman Andrew Wolff, CEO of Beowolff Capital, which acquired majority stakes in both companies over the past year.
It also comes just days before New York’s marquee November sales, which will offer plenty of chances to put the partnership to the test. Kalshi introduced art-related prediction markets in May and already offers contracts on individual paintings, entire collections, and whether artists will break their auction records.
Take Yoshitomo Nara’s Candy Blue Night (2001), which is headed to Sotheby’s on November 16. Users can trade contracts on whether the painting will sell for more than $6 million or $7 million. They can also trade on major works by Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein that are coming up for sale.
For now, the money changing hands in Kalshi’s art markets is dwarfed by the value of the objects being bet on. On Thursday, a market for Sotheby’s Blaquier-Arrieta Collection showed a roughly 52 percent probability that the sale would exceed $500 million. At the time, it had attracted just $372 in trading volume.
Still, the idea of making money from an auction without having to buy anything has its attractions.
Wendy Cromwell, founder of the advisory firm Cromwell Art and a former Sotheby’s contemporary art specialist, saw some promise in the idea but also reasons for concern.
“I do think it’s a way for people to participate in the community,” she said. She added that she meant people who are engaged with the art world, follow artists, and understand their markets, even if they aren’t collectors themselves.
But Cromwell also saw a potential problem: the advantage held by people with access to information the public doesn’t have.
“It’s going to be extraordinarily tempting for everybody because everyone in the art world has inside knowledge,” she said.
Philip Hoffman, founder and chairman of the Fine Art Group, was less enthusiastic. “I can’t see that it’s a great use to collectors,” he said. In his view, there’s no reliable way to predict the prices of major works, where personal preference, provenance, condition, and the whims of the wealthy can render even the most carefully considered valuations irrelevant.
Results for more ordinary works, he said, can be relatively predictable. The top of the market is another matter. “People get carried away if they truly want it, and there’s no price,” he said.
Hoffman, who spent 12 years at Christie’s, recalled once guaranteeing a Willem de Kooning painting that everyone expected to fetch substantially more than $10 million. Then the stock market fell, bidders disappeared, and he was left owning the painting himself. He eventually sold it for $9.7 million, taking a $300,000 loss. In other words, even knowing who intends to bid is no guarantee of knowing what will happen when the auctioneer raises the gavel.
There are also more troubling possibilities.
The art market runs on information that isn’t always available to the public. Auction house specialists usually know how many bidders are registered for a sale. Dealers and advisers may know who is interested in a painting, how badly they want it, and what they’re prepared to pay. Guarantors may already have a financial stake in a work before it reaches the auction block.
That’s an obvious problem for a prediction market. A casual participant might have access to auction estimates, past sales results, and whatever enthusiasm is circulating on social media. Someone closer to the sale, meanwhile, might know about confidential expressions of interest, guarantees, or the number of absentee bidders. The two would hardly be working with the same information.
Then again, access to sensitive information isn’t limited to senior specialists. Junior employees who help keep the wheels of commerce turning could also be privy to confidential bidding information, giving them an advantage over ordinary traders.
When Kalshi first moved into the art market in May, Christie’s and Phillips told ARTnews that they have robust policies governing the use of confidential information and participation in activities that present a conflict of interest. Both said those policies cover prediction markets. Sotheby’s declined to comment at the time.
For its part, Kalshi prohibits trading on material nonpublic information. Its rules for artwork-price contracts also bar certain insiders from participating, including consignors, bidders, guarantors, and auction house employees involved in a sale. But identifying those people and enforcing those restrictions in a business built on discretion is a challenge of its own.
The question I can’t stop turning over: Could prediction markets influence the auctions themselves? One can imagine a feedback loop in which speculative enthusiasm on prediction markets drives expectations higher and sways real buyers. A collector who sees overwhelming confidence that a picture will blow past its estimate might begin to second-guess an adviser’s valuation. Dealers or other interested parties might also see an opening to stoke enthusiasm for an artist’s market.
There’s another intriguing possibility. Might collectors use prediction contracts to offset some of their auction spending, effectively hedging their exposure to a purchase? Or might they look for gaps between the expectations reflected on Kalshi and what they believe artworks will actually bring at auction?
But there’s a catch. Kalshi’s rules prohibit people who can influence an auction’s outcome from betting on it. And with so little money being wagered so far, there isn’t much to be made anyway.
For now, the gap between multimillion-dollar auctions and prediction markets with little real money on the line suggests that Kalshi’s art offerings are more experiment than alternative financial market.
Still, Artnet’s involvement adds another dimension. The company will help identify subjects for prediction markets and provide data from its Price Database to verify the outcomes. Kalshi will continue to design the contracts and operate the exchange. Artnet has said its newsroom will not be involved in creating the markets or verifying results.
For Cromwell, the important question is whether anyone should treat these predictions as a serious measure of what art is worth.
“I think it’s a fool’s game to listen to prediction markets,” she said. “If you’re spending lots and lots of money, you should do your own research and have your own convictions about what you want to spend.”
