The biggest prediction market companies have been eager to position their products as “peer-to-peer,” pitting average Joes against other opinionated casuals. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, who raved Friday to analysts about the underlying economics of his own predictions product, is taking a different approach.
“The thing that worries me is that some of the predictions guys out there are positioning this as peer-to-peer when it’s really not,” Robins said in an interview. “It is technically, but it’s really more peer-to-Wall Street, peer-to-professional bettor or peer-to-market maker. … You’ve got to present the product as what it is.”
They’re among the most pointed public comments that Robins has made on the underlying realities of prediction markets, a new form of betting that has upended the industry since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. Startups Kalshi and Polymarket, private companies that have raised money at numbers higher than DraftKings’ market cap, have both taken the opposite approach, in marketing materials and public comments trying to frame their products as “peer-to-peer” both in structure and in skill level.
This sharks vs. minnows dynamic was central in the development of online poker, and it was also a vibrant debate when daily fantasy sports surged about a decade ago. DraftKings, ironically, was initially resistant to the framing that its DFS contests were not primarily casual fan vs. casual fan, though it did eventually start gate-keeping contests to separate beginners from more experienced players.
