Sharp or Square - THE FUTURE OF BETTING PART 1 - Prediction Markets, Scandals & Legal Battles
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What are prediction markets and how do they work?
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Welcome to Sharper Square, presented by Hard Rock Fat. We are part of the Volume Podcast Network. This is the show that makes the squares sharper and makes the wise guys pay attention. I am Chad Millman. I am joined, as always, by my co-host, my companion, my compadre, my BFF, professional better Simon Hunter. Hello, Simon.
Chad, how we doing?
Brother, we've been promising for a couple months now, we were going to do a couple episodes that looked at sports betting as it is today, because even since the end of the football season, it has changed so freaking dramatically as far as where professional bettors are putting their money what the opportunities are for casual bettors i'm talking about prediction markets i i have been knee deep in these prediction markets reporting my book since I got the deal to do the book in February of 25. The next month I was sitting in the office of Kalshi with the CEO of Kalshi an hour after he had gotten a cease and desist from the state of New Jersey demanding that Cauchy stop offering sports betting.
And they had only been doing it for a month. In May of 2026, 18 months after Cauchy first offered sports betting, they did $17 billion in trading volume. And that is the most they had done as a business. And the majority of that came from sports. i know you've got it you've been thinking a lot about this and you're participating i'm excited to talk about it today last summer we started talking about this topic with chris gerlacher who does incredible work covering this for prediction news a year later so many things have already changed we've invited chris back for part one of our episode covering the world of prediction markets how they've changed since this time last year where things are headed
Chris Gerlacher, good to see you again, brother.
Good to see you. Thanks for having me back.
Dude, things have gone fucking crazy.
Yeah, that's what I've noticed.
So as someone who is knee deep in this and who has been following this as a journalist, during the entire time, are you even a little surprised at the scope and scale and impact and influence of prediction markets, not just on sports, but really globally?
It's been staggering to see how much they grew. I mean, I've been writing about Predicted and some of these smaller platforms in 2022. I was writing about CalSheet back when there was a sharp divide between CalSheet and Sportrade and they were completely separate companies and different business models. I'm still shocked at how much they've grown and just how pervasive they've become. And people even are using them in forecasting. They're using them in some small creative hedges. And of course the sports category is enormous. It's 85, 95% of volume on the platform. So there's just so much to watch here even before diving into all the legal stuff.
Yeah, Simon, as a professional better, almost every professional better I talk to is experimenting in some way on prediction markets right now. Either they've moved their entire bankroll there and they've given up, completely disbanded their network of runners because they're just using prediction markets. Either they're hedging, they're market makers, meaning they're setting the prices and enticing a lot of casuals to bet into the prices. How are you seeing it? What do you think about it? How do you want to use it?
Yeah, it's still a tricky world. Like for everything good you just said, I know there's a lot of pros who can't get their money off these sites.
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Chapters
4 chaptersSpeakers
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