The conclave was briefly the world’s most riveting ‘sporting’ event

A hot new high-stakes competition show went viral on the internet this week that had fans placing bets, joining fantasy leagues, tweeting live updates, and posting daily recaps. But it wasn’t Love Island or Survivor. It was the conclave. 

The conclave is the Catholic Church’s traditional process for picking a new pope. It involves sequestering dozens of cardinals in an locked-down Sistine Chapel for an indefinite period, during which time they use a series of votes to elect a new pontiff. After each ballot, an old-fashioned system is used to let the world know whether a pope has been chosen: If the decision has not been made, black smoke issues from the Chapel’s chimney; if it has, the smoke is white.

This afternoon, white smoke issued after less than two days, announcing that Robert Francis Prevost, who has taken the papal name Leo XIV, had been chosen—and marking an end to a brief subculture of ultra-dedicated conclave fans.

Weeks before the conclave began, fans were already turning the election into a quasi-sporting event, analyzing each of the 133 contenders and placing bets on their chances of success. Once the conclave was actually underway, cardinal fever only became more intense—and more strange. These are four of the oddest ways that conclave watchers kept up with the news:

24/7 chimney watch

For the most dedicated of pope watchers, the official Vatican News channel hosted a 24/7 close-up livestream of the Sistine Chapel’s chimney, where the much-awaited smoke issues after each ballot. 

Despite the fact that the video was largely unchanging—except for the occasional seagull sounds or chatter from the street below—it consistently held the attention of thousands of viewers since going live yesterday. By the time white smoke was issued around noon ET, viewership nearly topped 300,000.

Pope Crave

For anyone who’s a frequent X user, you’re probably familiar with the account Pop Crave, which updates followers with pop culture news every few hours. Well, now there’s that, but for the next pope.

Pope Crave is keeping pope enthusiasts in the loop with a near-constant stream of conclave-related memes, photos, and, of course, real-time updates. The account started as a fan page for the film Conclave, but has since turned into a full-on conclave news outlet in its own right, working with ad hoc correspondents on the ground in Rome to deliver forthcoming details about the election process to its more than 70,000 followers. 

In an interview with Time magazine, the account’s main administrator, Susan Bin, said her long-term goal for the account is for “the Holy See to hire us so we can make official Vatican memes.”

Today, Pope Crave broke the news that a new pope had been selected minutes before many major news networks.

Polymarket

Thousands of people have already joined conclave-based fantasy leagues and put down their hard-earned cash on the cardinal they like best.

On the crypto trading platform Polymarket, “Who will be the next Pope” was the current top trending query on Tuesday, amassing over $27 million in trade volume. A handy color-coded chart kept track of how each candidate was faring among bidders. Just after white smoke issued from the Chapel, but before Prevost’s election was announced, bids on cardinal Pietro Parolin shot into a significant lead, followed by the internet’s favorite, Luis Antonio Tagle. 

Prevost’s election evidently came as a shock to most bidders, considering that his chances to win were hovering around 1% (and sometimes even edging closer to zero) in the days leading up to the decision.

Conclave Island

Frequent reality TV-enjoyers may have found it difficult to ignore that the conclave has a striking number of features in common with their favorite shows: A select group of individuals, sequestered from the rest of the world in an intense competition, which is also clouded in layers of mystery and drama. This certainly was not been lost on many fans of the drag competition show Drag Race, who took to captioning iconic images of the show with “the conclave” and speculating about what kind of cash prize the next pope might receive. 

Over on TikTok, creator Rob Andrson (@heartthrobert) took the reality TV comparison to the next level with a series of videos he called the “Pope Games.” Each installment was dedicated to explaining how the conclave works, as well as digging into all of the juicy gossip surrounding this year’s election, in a style that evoked the reality TV show Love Island.

In a Day 1 recap, posted yesterday evening, Anderson began, “Day one of the ‘Pope Games’ is complete. 133 of these singles have entered the villa: no technology or contact with the outside world, leaving the ring light at the door, losing their Duolingo streaks.” He went on to explain a shocking “smear campaign,” touched on reports that cardinals watched the Conclave movie to prepare for the election, and foreshadowed the schedule for day two. 

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