Chinese bettors hoping to make their fortune gambling on the demise of Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston’s relationship…can’t anymore. The world truly is an unfair, disgusting place.
Taobao—an eBay-esque marketplace—has forbidden vendors from offering “insurance policies” on Swift and Hiddleston’s union, a ploy that allowed participants to double their money if the pair split. Betting began last week, sometime between the time the two were first seen loitering on some rocks and then blasting around the world in a frenzy of parental meetings.
According to Xinhua News Agency:
One buyer named Xiaoting said: ‘If I bought a million, I would make a lot. These stars break up all the time which gives us the opportunity to earn a lot of money.’
While selling insurance is legal in China, gambling, with limited exception, is not. Via the Hollywood Reporter:
When asked for comment, Alibaba Group, which owns and operates Taobao, tells THR that it believes the breakup insurance was being used by sellers as a marketing tool to attract traffic. “As it is not strictly an insurance product, the sellers are not qualified as insurance sellers,” the company says. “So we have taken down such ‘products’ from the Taobao platform.”
Sorry, Xiaoting. It looks like you’re going to have to make money the old fashioned way: By betting on your own love life, which is still perfectly copacetic in the eyes of Old Man Law. From Xinhua:
There is even a policy for single people where if they meet a partner within a month of placing their bet then they will be given 13.14 yuan, which symbolises lifetime in Chinese.
Isn’t that something.
Image via Splash.
GET JEZEBEL RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
