Danny McBride Doing Kalshi Ads Is a Huge Bummer

Danny McBride appears in a new ad for Kalshi released online Friday. And many fans of the comedian couldn’t be more disappointed that McBride is now doing work for a betting site. The new ad features McBride as a weatherman and was written by the “Eastbound and Down” comedian, according to Variety. Shane Gillis, the rage-bait comedian who recently ruffled feathers with a controversial SNL monologue, co-stars in the ad as a competing weatherman. The online version of the ad is four minutes long, but a shorter version will air Friday during Game 1 of the World Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays. “In the past year I’ve made some questionable trades on contracts for local weather, Costco hot dog prices and cricket,” McBride said in a statement to Variety. “Working with Kalshi to make this very unique ad was a great way to both make amends on some of my questionable predictions, but also get to work with Shane, and reunite with my good pal, Deep Roy,” McBride said. Deep Roy plays a psychic in the new ad and had a role in “Eastbound and Down.” Fans of McBride were less enthused about his new association with Kalshi. “Damn, been a Danny McBride fan forever, but this is the end of the road for me. Wealth really does corrupt your judgment so that your primary goal always ends up being gaining more wealth,” one Bluesky user wrote on Friday. It’s unclear how much money McBride is making from the ad, but Kalshi has reportedly thrown around a lot of money. Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker says Kalshi offered him $1 million to sponsor his presidential election night stream in 2024. Piker turned down the offer, but plenty of other people have thrown their hat in with the gambling sites, which the industry prefers to call “prediction markets.” Even major news outlets like CNN, CNBC, and Fox News have signed partnership deals with Kalshi, which are themselves helping sway how voters feel about elections and individual candidates, according to a recent study from the Brennan Center. Another Bluesky user who was upset with McBride’s decision to associate with Kalshi wrote “hardest one of these in my entire life,” with the Wesley Snipes meme where he’s holding a gun and crying for what he has to do. “McBride becoming the thing he has spent years parodying is sad,” wrote another fan of the comedian. A CNN analysis from August found that users between 18 and 21 years old, who are banned from gambling in most states, had traded over $5 billion on Kalshi so far this year. That seems to have been driven largely by the World Cup, but it was also before the start of football season. “Every time I see any individual doing betting commercials, they go to the shit list,” another Bluesky user wrote about McBride’s new ad. “Kalshi is the new Saudi Golf Tournament,” still another Bluesky user observed. But McBride’s reputation may be just fine with many of his fans, given the popularity of online betting. And some people may find other ways to cope. “I’m simply gonna have to pretend I don’t see it,” one Bluesky user wrote. There are also likely to be people who are ready to just give up on hoping their favorite stars have any kind of principles beyond making a ton of money. Measles is back, our food is filled with glass, the government is hopelessly corrupt, and the big AI companies all insist they’re going to destroy the world. If that’s not a potent cocktail for American nihilism about the state of the world, I don’t know what is. Go ahead, bet on it all. And you may as well get paid hawking a platform that’s commodifying every single human experience.