MoviePass Mogul Aims To Turn Movie Buffs Into Fantasy/Prediction Market Players
Platform appears to adhere to federal trading laws as long as it’s free-to-play
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Offshoots and innovators attempting to exploit niches tend to follow other popular products.
Daily fantasy sports morphed into pick ‘em style games that very much resembled sports betting parlays, to the point that vigorous state-level pushback threatened to squash the idea last year.
Crypto.com’s posting of the first sports event contract in December 2024 predicated a new prediction market vertical that may alter or dismantle the state-level legal sports betting industry in the United States.
Sweepstakes casinos rushed into gray spaces in state online gambling laws.
Stacy Spikes, the CEO of subscription movie ticket service MoviePass, in May spearheaded the launch of a new hybrid of these platforms catering to movie fans’ — he hopes — desire to speculate on cinema industry news and results. A mix of DFS, prediction markets, and sweeps casino, MoviePass Mogul challenges players to draft a team of actors, directors, and films for their “studio,” swap out underperformers, and win prizes. As with social/sweeps, it is free-to-play, but so-called Mogul Coins used for enhanced play may eventually be monetized.
The value of the “assets” — the movies, actors, etc. — in a player’s studio will be determined by factors like budgets, costs, and real-time box office scoring.
On onions, movies, laws
The Mogul Coins element is where the idea may face a plot twist.
MoviePass Mogul’s reason for existence is driving customers to MoviePass’s subscription service, but the possibility of monetizing Mogul Coins — as Spikes has speculated about previously — could generate resistance from state or federal regulators and attorneys general like sweeps casinos and prediction markets have before it.
Spikes told The Crowd Pleaser newsletter: “We want to build the first true hub for entertainment speculation.”
Spikes sees Mogul as a hybrid between prediction markets and DFS, in many ways resembling HSX Exchange’s simulated movie prediction platform. Real money isn’t allowed to be traded there or on Mogul because lobbying from the Motion Picture Association of America in 2010 prompted Congress to amend the Onion Futures Act of 1958 to make the trading of futures on motion picture box office receipts impermissible.
Prediction markets like Kalshi offer movie markets, but score them based on awards outcomes or Rotten Tomatoes ratings.
Spikes told Variety: “We’ve always been a company built from a fan perspective. We’re not a studio, we’re not a theater, but we want to really find a new way of creating engagement around going to the movies. We don’t want people to just sit at home. This allows film fans to show the same competitive spirit that sports teams inspire.”
MoviePass landed a $100 million commitment from Global Emerging Markets’ Token Fund when Mogul launched in May. Variety reported that Mogul then had a waiting list of 400,000, but sign-ups are now being taken at the end of its first “season.”
