Markets show a significant spike in Swift Engagement odds hours prior to the official announcement

In a surprising turn of events, a user named "romanticpaul" on the prediction platform Polymarket made a significant profit by correctly predicting the engagement of NFL tight end Travis Kelce and global pop icon Taylor Swift.

Leading prediction platforms, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, had been tracking the timing of a potential proposal from Kelce to Swift. However, the payout for successful bets on Polymarket is capped at $1 per share, making it a challenging market to predict.

Prior to the surge in bets, the odds of a 2025 engagement on Polymarket were around 50/50. But on Tuesday, just minutes before the official announcement, "romanticpaul" acquired nearly 1,200 additional "Yes" shares at under 50 cents each. The total amount wagered by "romanticpaul" was $500.

The proposal was a private event before the couple made a public announcement in December 2023. At the time of the additional bets, the market on Polymarket estimated the odds of an engagement to be less than 50/50.

Around 3 pm ET on Monday, "romanticpaul" purchased 199 "Yes" shares at 30 cents each on Polymarket. This move, coupled with the additional bets just hours before the announcement, meant that "romanticpaul" stood to make 70 cents profit per share if the engagement happened by year's end.

The search results do not contain information about the name of the user on the Polymarket platform who won around $70,000 just hours before the official announcement. Some speculate that "romanticpaul" might have had insider information about the upcoming proposal, while others believe that the successful prediction was more likely a fortunate guess.

Kelce proposed to Swift about two weeks prior to the public announcement, at a house in Missouri with friends. The exact details of the proposal remain private, but the news of the engagement sent waves through the entertainment industry.

As the dust settles, the mystery of "romanticpaul" remains. Who is this user, and how did they manage to predict such a significant event? Only time will tell if this is a one-off success or the start of a new trend in prediction market betting.

Markets show a significant spike in Swift Engagement odds hours prior to the official announcement