It’s difficult to get your head around why anyone would spend good money on this bet, but nevertheless, PaddyPower ran a market on when the world would end.
The End of the World is not the cheeriest of topics to have a punt on, and when you think about it, it’s a pretty pointless punt as well, but I will discuss that a little bit more later.
This market was offered in line with Donald Trump’s first term as President of the United States, during which he made several politically dangerous comments and threats towards countries with slightly unhinged leaders, so you can see why the market was deemed to be a good idea.
Punters could choose between the world ending in 2017 or 2018, with odds of 100/1 for the former and 500/1 for the latter.
Why the huge difference? I have no idea.
Trump, Kim Jon Un and the Nuclear Threat
There is a whole page of Donald Trump themed weird bets on this website, but this one wasn’t directly linked to him, although the insinuation was pretty clear.
After Trump’s election (which followed the Brexit vote and Britain leaving the EU), the collective feeling was that things once thought extremely unlikely were actually much more likely than previously believed.
That included a nuclear war.
Trump and Kim Jon Un had been having a Twitter spat, where each told the other that their nuclear button was bigger than the others’ (really, this was the level of immaturity on show), and the fear that a nuclear war could be triggered by an online beef was real.
As it turned out, Trump made history as the first sitting President to ever visit North Korea and arguably did more to improve relations between the two countries than any other President, but at the time, things were much more uncertain.
So that is why PaddyPower created the market in the first place, probably more for a bit of a joke than as a serious market, but I bet one or two people stuck a fiver on it – although I can’t for the life of me understand why they would do that.
What is the Point of Betting on the End of the World?
It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this would be an utterly pointless bet to make, and a complete waste of money.
PaddyPower essentially gave anyone who wanted to gift them some money, a way to make a donation via their website with this ‘betting’ market.
Think about it.
If you make the bet for 2018 and the world didn’t end, your bet loses. If you made your bet for 2018 and the world did end, you would most probably be dead and unable to make a withdrawal.
Even if you were one of the last 0.01% of people left in a post nuclear world, do you really think PaddyPower would still be opening their shops at 9am every morning, or processing withdrawal requests online?
Would money hold any value in a world that had ended? Probably not.
We’ve all seen end of the world movies; all anyone is bothered about is finding food, water, and shelter, and avoiding getting themselves killed by roaming bands of savages.
So, if anyone did take this bet, I would like to personally tell you off for throwing your money away.