If you were to wager on the likelihood of the Nicaragua Canal project being completed, what sort of betting odds would you expect?

The controversial project, which aims to compete against the Panama Canal, has attracted considerable media attention in 2015. Most of the news reports surrounding the Nicaragua Canal, which will ostensibly be located more than a hundred kilometers to the north of the border with Costa Rica, deal with the quixotic factor of the project, its devastating environmental impact, and how little work has been carried out.

In the last few months, wagering ratios have been mentioned in connection with the Nicaragua Canal. In August, Bloomberg View published an article by Justin Fox, former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, who wrote:

[This is] a giant canal [project] wide enough to handle new ultra-large container ships that won’t be able to fit through the Panama Canal even after a big expansion scheduled to be completed next year. It isn’t certain that those ships are going to catch on, and even if they do the odds that such a canal could actually pay for itself seem slim.

Also in August, the International Business Times quoted Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas:

There’s healthy skepticism that at the end of the day it would be built. I just don’t see what the purpose for it is,” said Farnsworth, who puts the odds of the canal being built at less than 50 percent.

In late June, readers of The Diplomat also mentioned betting odds when commenting on an article about the project, and a similar situation took place at The Nicaragua Dispatch last year, when a reader of both that publication and The Costa Rica Star commented that “Odds are the canal project will implode before getting very far anyway.” A blog post by Long Bridge Capital, an investment advisory dedicated to emerging markets, mentioned the “long odds” of such a project being completed.

Based on the above reports, would you say that the odds of the Nicaragua Canal are better than Donald Trump being elected President of the United States?

Whenever political situations or events with future outcomes are reported by news outlets and discussed by the public, prediction and speculation are inevitable, and wagering often ensues. In the 21^st century, prediction markets that enable political betting have emerged as very popular wagering options. In fact, political betting is handled by a few sportsbooks in Costa Rica.

A senior manager for IDSca.com, a leading Pay-Per-Head provider in Costa Rica disclosed the following:

“Presidential election betting has been popular with bettors since the Al Gore vs George W. Bush election in 2000. The wagers reflect how the people feel about the candidates, and in turn who they will be voting for in the upcoming election. Currently, IDSca.com offers winner of the Republican candidacy, the Democratic candidacy, the party to win the election, as well as Hillary Clinton against any other candidate.”

Since 1997, International Data Solutions has been providing services to land-based sports betting advisors from Costa Rica. The pay-per-head concept can be described as a sort of sportsbook-as-a-platform service, complete with a website and toll-free number for clients.

The fact that IDSca also offers a platform for betting on the U.S. elections speaks to the popularity of prediction markets. As the elections get closer, the wagering action on these events reaches levels similar to NFL and NBA games. What makes political betting so attractive to players is that elections and similar events generate a massive amount of data and information to review for the purpose of making calculated wagers.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of political betting and prediction markets is that they are taken very seriously by stakeholders. Campaign managers, strategists and journalists often turn to these markets to gauge the sentiment of constituents who put money where their ideology is. A recent report in the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Las Vegas oddsmakers as they gave 3 to 1 odds to Donald Trump and 2 to 1 odds to Hillary Clinton to win their respective tickets.