Kalshi presses for single-game sports betting
Sharpr is a newsletter breaking down the companies, technology, and trends shaping the future of internet gambling.
In this week’s edition of Sharpr…
Kalshi presses for single-game sports betting in CFTC filing.
PrizePicks continues games industry talent hiring spree with former EA, Niantic executive.
Americans were expected to bet $1.4B on yesterday’s Super Bowl.
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Kalshi presses for single-game sports betting in CFTC filing
Prediction market platform Kalshi has filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to offer event contracts on single-game outcomes, Dustin Gouker reported on Friday.
Kalshi has self-certified a new binary option market titled “will [team] win [event],” allowing users to trade on the outcome of a single sporting event, such as the winner of an NBA game (as referenced in the filing).
The proposed offering is a leap from Kalshi’s current sports outcome contracts, which are limited to league, division, and tournament winners (think: Champions League winner, Eastern Conference Finals champion).
The new set of contracts was initially set to be listed starting February 8, but have not yet been made available at the time of writing.
As of Sunday evening, Kalshi has traded $20M in Super Bowl contracts, with roughly another $10M placed on various prop bets–including which celebrities will attend the event in person and which brands will run ads during the commercial breaks. CEO Tarek Mansour shared a promotional video showcasing its markets hours ahead of the big game.
Kalshi is available in all 50 states, which has brought Super Bowl betting to places where sports gambling isn’t legal–such as Texas and California.
🔎 Between the lines: The filing enables Kalshi to offer a form of moneyline betting reserved for licensed sportsbook operators.
Legally, Kalshi operates under the CFTC’s oversight of event contracts rather than a sports betting license. This has allowed the company to offer similar markets to those of sportsbooks, but without the same regulatory restrictions.
The CFTC recently stepped in to curb a deal that would have seen Robinhood host Kalshi’s Super Bowl market on its platform. The financial brokerage app said it was "disappointed” by the CFTC’s decision.
Should Kalshi be able to proceed with single-match outcome contracts, it would bring the prediction platform even closer to sportsbooks’ territory (and substantially expand the volume of events they can accept wagers on).
The question is–how far will lawmakers allow the envelope to be pushed?
PrizePicks continues games industry talent hiring spree with former EA, Niantic executive
PrizePicks continued its streak of recruiting executive talent from the games industry last week with the appointment of its new chief marketing officer, Mike Quigley.
Quigley is a 30-year veteran of the games industry, having spent more than a decade at Electronic Arts and most recently Niantic, where he led marketing for the developer’s blockbuster mobile game Pokémon GO.
At PrizePicks, Quigley will oversee brand vision, go-to-market strategy, campaign development, and overall marketing efforts across the company.
Quigley is the latest in a string of PrizePicks gaming executive hires, including CEO Mike Ybarra and CFO Marcus Sanford–both of whom left Activision Blizzard to join the DFS company last year.
Interestingly, Quigley commended the PrizePicks team's ability to provide its users with innovative “gameplay” in his press statement. The choice of wording here is curiously appropriate for a company which now has three former gaming execs on its C-suite bench.
It’s a subtle touch, but one that may be indicative of a mindset shift internally–perhaps indicating the DFS company has begun subscribing to the idea that the sports betting product will move more in the direction of interactive entertainment (more on that here).
Whether or not I’m reading too much into that is certainly up for debate (probably), but at a minimum, Ybarra thinks there are “a lot of similarities” between video games and gambling.
“There is crossover in how you think about engagement, monetization and brand preference, and free-to-play games like Fortnite or Overwatch,” he said in October.
Meanwhile, PrizePicks’ founder Adam Wexler (who now serves as the company’s Executive Chairman) said they consciously looked outside the gambling industry for his chief executive replacement. At the time, he said “pulling from the video game sector, who knows how to put players first, made complete sense.”
PrizePicks did not respond to a request for comment regarding the pattern of hiring talent from the games industry.
🗞 In the news
Bayes Esports teamed up with Google to provide search users with access to real-time esports event data.
Kalshi’s rollout of sports trading markets included the League of Legends World Championship.
GGBET inked a sponsorship deal with FC Dynamo Kyiv for its winter training camp.
📈 By the numbers
Americans were expected to bet $1.4B on yesterday’s Super Bowl.
A Polymarket bettor wagered $600,000 on Josh Allen to win the NFL MVP—and won.