TL;DRMark Zuckerberg directed Meta to build a prediction market app called Arena, rattling DraftKings and Flutter shares on Tuesday.
Mark Zuckerberg has directed a small team at Meta to build a smartphone app that would compete with prediction market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The app, internally called Arena, would operate independently from Facebook and Instagram. Meta declined to comment.
Arena would initially use a video-game-style points system rather than letting users wager real money, according to the report. The company has not ruled out introducing real-money betting in the future. The distinction matters because real-money prediction markets face federal oversight from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulators around the world have increasingly treated as gambling.
The announcement sent shares of existing betting and prediction market companies lower. DraftKings fell more than 2 percent on the news, Flutter Entertainment dropped roughly 2 percent, and Robinhood also declined. The market reaction reflects the threat that Meta’s distribution advantage poses to smaller platforms.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!Meta could direct its roughly 3 billion monthly active users across Facebook and Instagram toward a prediction market product, a scale that no existing platform comes close to matching. Polymarket and Kalshi have grown rapidly but remain niche by comparison. Combined monthly trading volume across both platforms quadrupled from under $5 billion to $24 billion between September 2025 and April 2026, according to Pew Research, but even that surge is small relative to Meta’s user base.
