Movie futures: A hog-awful idea

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Mike Fleming at Deadline New York offers the best response yet to the absurd/disturbing news of a financial market for box office. We know a couple people who are part of fantasy box-office leagues, which are operated in the same way as fantasy-football leagues. That seems harmless enough, and it’s even kind of fun.

But creating a real market with real dollars around a movie’s performance poses all sorts of ethical and logistical questions. Even individual sports like tennis give gambling sites fits because the results are too easily manipulated; the path between those with skin in the game and those with a role in the outcome is simply too short. If that’s true in sports, it’s doubly true here. Let’s hope regulatory agencies take care of this one – and if not, that the free market does its work for it.

--Steven Zeitchik