Kalshi cofounder and CEO Tarek Mansour doesn’t consider Polymarket to be his primary competition, and tells Front Office Sports the rival prediction-market platform should “come under the regulated umbrella” because its recent scandals serve to sully the entire industry’s reputation.
Kalshi and Polymarket are widely viewed as the two leading U.S. prediction-market platforms, echoing the early days of DraftKings and FanDuel in daily fantasy sports. However, Kalshi has far greater market share, according to analysts at Bank of America, who recently said it has captured 91% of the market, with the next two platforms being Polymarket followed by Underdog.
“When I think about competition, I don’t think about Polymarket, honestly, as much as some of the others,” Mansour says, speaking to FOS at Kalshi’s headquarters in New York City. “We have a whole suite of competitors.”
He points to derivatives exchange CME Group, which last year helped FanDuel launch its own prediction market product, as well as Robinhood, as two other rival platforms. The industry has seen rapid growth in the last year, with other companies offering prediction-market platforms including DraftKings, Novig, and Coinbase.
