We Bet Money* on Deutsche Bahn So You Don't Have To
A hot new predication market is now boarding.
Picture this: You’ve arrived at Hauptbahnhof for your weekend trip to Frankfurt, prepared to crush at least one mini bottle of Riesling in the Bordbistro, and find that your train, and every other train to your destination in the next few hours, is heavily delayed. Some people might immediately fire up a strongly worded tweet to Deutsche Bahn; others might use the extra time to grab Brötchen at Le Crobag (my personal preference). Now, there’s a third option: head to Bahn.bet and make some caßh (more on that later) guessing when your train will actually roll in.
Bahn.bet is exactly what it sounds like: a prediction market for Europe’s most middling fleet of trains. Think Polymarket or Kalshi, but what you’re betting on is a phenomenon familiar to everyone who’s traveled in Germany – or Austria, Switzerland, France, Poland, or the Netherlands. That’s because, thanks to Europe’s interconnected rail service, the effects of Deutsche Bahn’s failing infrastructure are not constrained by something as prosaic as “borders.”
“I don’t even live in Germany and I have to suffer through it,” the site’s creator, Vienna-based artist and satirist Caio van Caarven, told HEIST. “There is this passive-aggressive Austrian way of dealing with German trains, which is when you go to a station and a train is delayed, they generally say, ‘Cause of delay is [a train] from a neighbouring country – and everyone knows which neighbouring country they're talking about.”
For better or worse, you can’t actually get rich betting on DB delays – yet. Each new user is given €1,000 in “caßh” to start with, so while the live data is real, the money is not. Van Caarven didn’t want to deal with the headache dealing in actual money would entail. “I make it as secure as it needs to be for the stuff we're dealing with, but I don't need to be a bank,” he said. Still, the functionality to actually place a bet is just as satisfying: You drag a slider to pick your predicted delay, choose how much you want to wager, and then click a big red BET button. (He’s done a great job appealing to our lizard brains with this UX.) Personally, I’m a cautious better, even when the money is fake – so my wins, while consistent, have so far been modest.
“It reminds me a lot of the old internet, the internet that wasn't algorithmic."
Van Caarven has the Austrian equivalent to a Bahncard 100; consequently, he’s experienced a lot of pain at the hands of Deutsche Bahn. But he’s sought to creatively channel that frustration. Bahn.bet is the latest addition to an extended project that he’s dubbed DBSM, or “the masochistic German train company.” He’s created a Hansel-and-Gretel-esque game about finding a seat, a line of T-shirts and hoodies, and tongue-in-cheek prints (including one about how the trolley problemdoesn’t exist in the world of Deutsche Bahn), all of which he draws by hand.
Late last year, Deutsche Bahn broke its own (poor) record on train lateness, setting a historic low for punctuality with only roughly half of long-distance trains arriving on time. Bahn.bet cites a federal court ruling that "buying a Deutsche Bahn ticket constitutes a form of gambling, on the grounds that the probability of arriving on time is statistically comparable to a coin toss" as its founding inspiration (though the court ruling appears to be part of the satire.) “If train travel is gambling, then passengers deserve the right to protect themselves,” the About page reads.
Since the site launched on March 2, it has expanded to include train data from nine more countries (including Switzerland, which, the website notes, “is the wild card – if your trains are actually on time, the game becomes even more exciting. Predicting a 0-minute delay takes real courage”). Each train route is represented by a tile, which contains basic information like scheduled arrival versus estimated arrival, and how much has already been bet on a particular train. The hottest delays can clock totals well over €20,000.
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Besides building your balance by accurately predicting train delays, Bahn.bet also rewards consistency and sociability, giving out bonuses for placing a certain number of bets, winning at a certain percentage, or engaging in the community aspects of the site. Those social elements – like the leaderboard of richest Bahn-doubters – are crucial to van Caarven’s vision of the project; throughout our conversation, he emphasised that he built the site in large part because he wanted to make something enjoyable.
“I knew it could go viral,” he said, “but I made it because I was like, wouldn’t it be fun?”
Users have responded in kind. Since its launch, roughly 300,000 people have visited the site; there are almost 10,000 active users. Van Caarven reports more than €21 million in caßh currently in circulation, with the biggest win a whopping €3,506* on ICE 29 (Berlin Gesundbrunnen to Munich Hbf). The comment sections for especially delayed trains are lively, goofy places. There are ‘Silent Zone’ and ‘First Class’ chatrooms. Some users comment as if they’re speaking to fellow irritated passengers on a train platform; others say things like “schrödingers zug.”
“I’m a neurodivergent bisexual, so I’m capable of everything.”
“It reminds me a lot of the old internet, the internet that wasn't algorithmic, the internet where the things that went viral went viral because people wanted them to, [not] because Instagram decided or TikTok decided or YouTube decided,” van Caarven said.
Within a week, the actual Deutsche Bahn had taken notice. They put out an Instagram post showing a fictional passenger asking a DB worker to wait 10 minutes before setting off so she can win her bet; DB only gets lightly defensive in the caption, noting that in 2024 “only 2.4 percent of all long-distance trains were more than 60 minutes late.”
When I suggested to van Caarven that he must also have a serious background in coding in order to expand his DBSM project into a website this complex, he paused, then replied, “I’m a neurodivergent bisexual, so I’m capable of everything.”
In the week since we spoke, he’s really fleshed that out. There are now more than 5,700 trains to bet on, and reportedly more on the way. (“French strikes? Bet on it. Amtrak being Amtrak? Bet on it,” the site teased in an email to users.) And there are now material rewards at stake: At the end April, the top three players will caßh out in the form of DBSM merch. I’ve won a meager €367 so far, so I doubt I’ll be rocking a “Deutsche Bahnana: one slip away from a two hour delay” tee anytime soon. But at least I have a new channel for my irritation the next time Deutsche Bahn derails my weekend.
