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Online prediction market Kalshi hit a daily record on Super Bowl Sunday, surpassing $1bn in trading volume, the company announced on Tuesday.
Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, called it an “incredible weekend”, telling CNBC that “Kalshi was the biggest brand of the Super Bowl this year, without running a Super Bowl ad”.
Kalshi trading volume during the game was up 2,700% year over year. More than $100m were bets on Bad Bunny’s opening song and $45m on which artists would perform with him on stage. In comparison, the platform saw $27m in total trading volume at last year’s Super Bowl.
Prediction markets like Kalshi allow users to trade on the outcomes of virtually anything, from sports and elections to what color someone will wear during a performance. Unlike casinos or traditional sportsbooks, users effectively bet (or “trade”) against others on the platform, instead of an established “house”, and the platforms earn revenue by charging trading fees.
Kalshi and competitor Polymarket argue that this model distinguishes them from traditional casinos or sportsbooks. Since the US supreme court overturned the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, state gambling agencies regulate traditional gambling outfits, but prediction markets are currently overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
“The reason people are flocking to prediction markets, especially Kalshi, is that our incentive as a company [is] we win when the customers win, we don’t win when the customers lose, and that’s a huge difference in the model,” Mansour said on Tuesday.
On Sunday, Kalshi told users that although some deposits were “delayed because of the amount of traffic and deposits we’re getting”, their money “is safe and on the way, it will just take longer to land”.
Prediction markets have risen in popularity in recent months and are now used beyond sports, edging into other events such as the Grammys and Oscars. Last week, Kalshi announced that the NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo was joining the company as a shareholder.
But in recent months, critics have raised concerns about potential market manipulation and insider trading on these prediction market sites. Ahead of the Super Bowl, Kalshi said it expanded its surveillance and enforcement efforts to detect and remove accounts engaging in insider trading or market manipulation.
In a post on X days before the Super Bowl, Mansour said the company over the past year “ran over 200 investigations and froze relevant accounts” and referred several active cases to law enforcement.
