Polymarket’s Coming-Out Party in Washington Was a Disaster

The grand opening of Polymarket’s “Situation Room” bar—a three-day pop-up experience billed as the world’s first brick-and-mortar destination for monitoring global prediction markets—should have had its own betting market on whether or not it would be a disaster. Someone could have walked away with a decent chunk of change.

“Welcome to the Situation Room, everyone. We view this as our real coming-out party in DC,” Neil Kumar, Polymarket’s chief legal officer and former Commodity Futures Trading Commission counsel, said at the event. “We’ve proven that the concept of prediction markets exists, and we’ve proven that the concept is here to stay, and we want to be a part of the conversations in DC. And where best to have a conversation than in a bar?”

Despite Kumar’s vision, Polymarket’s coming-out party was delayed. The pop-up started late due to technical issues, and for an hour and a half, bartenders came outside to take drink orders from reporters and happy hour guests as they grumpily tried to stay dry. Joshua Tucker, who joined Polymarket as head of growth in November, built the event from the same playbook he used leading viral marketing for MrBeast, the YouTuber famous for orchestrating elaborate, and often dystopian stunts. This event was billed similarly: At the pop-up bar, geopolitical crises like the US war on Iran were now a spectator sport attendees could casually bet on in real time with their drinking buddies.

Eventually, Tucker announced that the event’s main attraction—dozens of TVs displaying Bloomberg terminals, X feeds, and cable news—would not be online that night.

Inside the pop-up, members of the media mixed with Hill staffers and curious onlookers who had never used Polymarket’s product. Hours into opening night, rumors spread that ex-members of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would arrive later in the evening. Nick O’Neill, a crypto-focused content creator who goes by @chooserich on X, flew in from Miami with his media company to cover the event. His plan was to shoot a video with a colleague, “competing against each other to see who ends up making more money,” he said, and placing bets based on the information that was supposed to be blasting from monitors behind the bars.

The TVs never came on, and O’Neill and his team had nothing to film. The dozens of monitors Polymarket put up for the event remained off, except for an interactive betting game that didn’t allow attendees to place real bets. An orb, fashioned like a miniature version of the Sphere in Las Vegas, spun with a world map and live bets Polymarket users were making on the platform, like “Russia x Ukraine ceasefire by end of April?” and “Will the US confirm that aliens exist before 2027?” O’Neill said he’d return the following day to try again.

Promptly at 9:00 pm, Tucker announced that the bar would be shutting down for the evening, hours earlier than anticipated, so event staff could work to fix the technical issues plaguing the venue. If they didn’t leave before doors opened, most guests stuck around for free drinks and to gawk at the chaos.

Most of the people WIRED talked to at the pop-up weren’t really Polymarket users. But the event wasn’t just about marketing: For three years, Polymarket was barred from operating in the US after the CFTC fined the company $1.4 million for “offering off-exchange event-based binary options and failure to obtain designation as a designated contract market (DCM) or registration as a swap execution facility (SEF).” US-based users were blocked from using the platform up until July of last year, when Polymarket acquired a holding company for an already regulated trading platform called QCEX. The event was meant to signal the company’s stature as one of the premiere prediction market services, in the nation’s capital, blocks away from the CFTC and other agencies, and with full government support. Other outlets, including The Washington Post, reported that administration officials were in attendance.

The next morning, Polymarket announced on X that “There may or may not have been a situation in the Situation Room last night. Reports remain unconfirmed. However, the situation monitors are now on… & ready to be monitored.”

The following day, the screens were on, but many of the marquee attractions, like the Bloomberg terminals and X feeds, were nowhere to be found. Instead, CNN, Fox News, and the Pentagon pizza tracker played on the monitors. Around 5:30 pm on Saturday, all of the screens flicked off because of the recurring power issue, two women present said; bar staff passed around glasses of champagne in apology. O’Neill, who returned on Saturday, filmed what became more of an advertisement for the bar, instead of the competitive betting video he flew into town to film in the first place.

William, a military member who declined to give his full name and uses Kalshi—Polymarket’s main competitor—had wandered in from the street after walking by the space and spotting the sign. He had bet about $1,000 of his last tax return on college basketball and a few political markets guessing what Donald Trump would say each week. “I’m down $100 right now, but I’ve been lower. I’ve been higher,” he said. Asked if the screens inside the bar were useful for the types of bets he makes, he said, “No, not really.”

Dylan, a college senior who also declined to give his full name, says he has put in around $100 in markets betting on the prices of gold and cryptocurrency. He put it more bluntly when asked if the Situation Room was helpful for placing bets: “Probably not. When you’re in the bar, it’s more fun for like a laugh and a look-around with your buddies,” he said. “When you’re trying to make money, you’re trying to do some kind of analysis.”

William and Dylan were among the seemingly few patrons who actually had experience using platforms like Polymarket. Most others were there for the meme. Instead of placing bets, guests were scrolling their own X feeds and filming the spectacle between beers. It was a party. “Girl, when will we ever be in the Polymarket bar eating pizza again?” one woman told her friend. They laughed, and offered me a slice from the Pentagon Pizza–themed pie.