(CNN) — This World Cup, a bunch of people decided to gamble millions on whether soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo would cry during a match.
The bet, which happened on Polymarket, isn’t weird for the wild world of prediction markets. Like whether aliens will be announced by the US government, whether a coup attempt will take place in Russia — even whether the earth is flat. (One trader lost $915 betting against the earth’s sphericity).
So traders looking to get an edge began closely examining Ronaldo’s long, storied career for evidence of crying. There were tears of despair, like from Portugal’s heartbreaking 2022 World Cup loss, in which he kneeled on the grass while weeping. There was also a record of happy tears, like this year, when he helped his club secure the Saudi title for the first time during his tenure.
This week, the odds had settled at around 70% favoring tears.
Monday’s match was to be Ronaldo’s last of this World Cup, ending in heartbreak for the 41-year-old soccer legend, with Portugal falling to Spain 1-0. It could be his final World Cup match ever.
So did he cry or what?
“You see Ronaldo here, obviously very emotional,” a FOX broadcaster remarked as the Portuguese legend wiped his face and walked off the pitch.
But exactly how emotional was he? The harder they looked, the less everyone agreed. Then the investigations began.
Enhance!
After the match, users on Polymarket’s Discord channel began downloading and scrutinizing zoomed-in photos of Ronaldo’s scrunched face. The odds shot up and down as new evidence came in.
Arrows were added pointing to potential tears on Ronaldo’s right eye and nose. Newly found video angles were scrutinized frame-by-frame.
“Only sweat and glistening skin,” said one user in the “no-crying” camp. “Yes, he is tearing up, fighting it. But clearly there are no tears.”
Another pointed to Ronaldo’s previous, wetter sobs, listing three “good examples” of Ronaldo “clearly shedding tears in the past,” including Ronaldo’s acceptance speech for winning the 2013 Ballon D’Or during which falling liquid can clearly be seen on the right side of his cheek.
But those in the pro-crying wing dismissed the so-called “sweat theory.”
“Yes, he cried, and we all know he cried,” one Discord user wrote. “It’s possible to draw this conclusion from the micro-expressions of sadness in the videos and photos.”
Some in the pro-crying camp pointed to articles and headlines as proof.
The BBC’s headline read “Ronaldo’s World Cup career ends in tears…,” while ESPN also included a sorrowful description: “A visibly emotional Ronaldo wiped tears from his eyes as he applauded the fans.”
“You cannot wipe tears that don’t exist,” the poster noted.
Crying foul
Polymarket’s procedures call for disputed markets to be adjudicated by the company’s internal markets team and then formally voted on by holders of the cryptocurrency UMA.
After the debate started brewing, Polymarket flagged the market for review, eventually making a determination: yes, they said. He cried.
“As of the time of this Clarification, there exists qualifying photographic and video evidence, taken on the field during the aftermath of the Portugal v. Spain game, depicting Cristiano Ronaldo crying, including visible tears on his face,” they wrote.
Polymarket did not, however, reveal which specific evidence they used to reach their decision.
With that final judgment, millions of dollars changed hands as the trade finalized.
“Where is evidence?,” raged one user on the market’s comment section.
“Did Gianni Infantino decide this?,” wrote another, referencing the controversy-prone FIFA head.
A source familiar with Polymarket’s process said that the crying is obviously debatable: “It is a total Rorschach test. It could go either way.”
The source told CNN that Polymarket’s markets team combed through evidence, including photos, video and news reports, but didn’t post them for fears that it could invite “hyperfixation” from users who might accuse them of being AI-manipulated and that it could potentially invite litigation.
Ron Yurko, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Center, described Polymarket’s failure to post the evidence as a sign of the “Wild West” regulatory environment for prediction markets.
“It’s actually pretty crazy they don’t offer any proof,” he said. “This is part of the lack of transparency around these markets. Which is why a regular person should be very cautious about participating in it.”
Polymarket declined to publicly comment on the evidence used to determine its outcome.
A professional opinion on crying
Dr. Ad Vingerhoets, a clinical psychologist and emeritus professor of Emotions and Wellbeing with the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology of Tilburg University, who is a leading expert on crying with research focusing on “emotional tears,” said that the footage showed Ronaldo on the verge of crying but doing his best to hold back the tears.
“He’s clearly about to cry,” Dr. Vingerhoets said. “But he’s struggling.”
Dr. Vingerhoets opined that if you were to use the production of tears as the decisive criteria in determining if Ronaldo cried, “then the conclusion must be: no crying.”
But Dr. Vingerhoets still said that, by his own definition, he does consider it a cry.
“I can fully agree with the conclusion that, despite the absence of visible tears, what we see here is crying and the struggle to suppress it,” he said.
The post-truth betting era
Traditionally, resolving bets is a no-brainer.
The New York Knicks win by 10. Jalen Brunson puts up 31 points. Josh Hart snags ten rebounds. There’s not really much to dispute in a box score.
But prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have opened the door for bets unthinkable in the past. (CNN has a partnership with Kalshi, using its data to interpret events; our journalists are prohibited from using all prediction markets.)
Not only is there a market on Polymarket for whether Jesus will return (which will resolve to ‘yes’ only “if The Second Coming of Jesus Christ occurs by December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET.”) — there’s also a secondary market on whether the odds of the Jesus returning market will exceed a certain percentage.
Because of the vast amount of money being thrown into these markets, semantic debates have exploded into financial ones.
Earlier this year, markets popped up on Polymarket and Kalshi over whether rapper Cardi B would “perform” at the Super Bowl halftime show. During Bad Bunny’s show, Cardi B made a cameo dancing alongside actors Jessica Alba and Pedro Pascal — but she did not sing. Her appearance led to extreme parsing of the phrase “performed.” Polymarket ended up marking its $5 million dollar market as “Yes,” while Kalshi partially refunded its users. At least one trader filed a complaint against Kalshi with federal regulators for the judgment, according to the New York Times.
“The more that they are allowed,” said Yurko, “the more we are going to see situations where it’s ambiguous — and outrage from people who are determined to be the winning bet.”
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