No doubt emboldened by its US$11 billion valuation, Kalshi–hitherto President Donald Trump’s favourite prediction markets site for correctly predicting his return to office–has signed an exclusive deal with leading MAGA foe CNN.
Tarek Mansour’s leading-edge binary Futures betting machine, which has upended the sportsbook ecosphere this year, will now become the official “prediction markets partner” of CNN, which remains a pillar of the Liberal Democratic anti-Trump media and a paragon of Trump’s “Fake News” machine.
Where this leaves Kalshi’s relationship with Trump Inc. remains problematic.
The U.S. president’s son, Donald J. Trump Jr., for example, is still currently a strategic advisor and investor in the Futures site born in the academia of the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Mansour and his co-Founder Luana Lopes Lara were students.
Spectacular
Founded in 2018, the year that PASPA was repealed by the U.S. Supreme Court, tempered in the hothouse of Covid-19, Kalshi’s rise has been spectacular.
In June this year it was valued at US$2 billion (£1.49bn). Today, a mere six-months on, its market value has surged to US$11 billion (£8.24bn).
Kalshi, like its major rivals and peers, Robinhood and Polymarket, for example, has been enmeshed in a series of lawsuits across the principal states brought by gambling commissions and other iGaming regulatory bodies, that have been trying to block its entry into the hyper-lucrative U.S. sports betting market.
But amid the legal fandango, Kalshi’s rise has been irresistible.
Faced with such game-changing disruption, all of America’s top iGaming and digital betting platforms–FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM–have decided to join the prediction markets phenomenon by launching joint-venture platforms of their own.
Real-Time Events
Confirming the tie-in with Kalshi, CNN said in a press statement: “It is the world’s largest federally regulated exchange, having created and established the predictions market category as a financial asset class.
“Users can trade on real-world events to predict the outcomes of elections, weather, cultural moments, and more.
“It’s because of this accuracy that Kalshi’s data will serve as a powerful complement to CNN’s reporting.
“Journalists can more easily surface credible information to their audiences about the real-time probabilities of future cultural and political events.”
The new Kalshi-CNN relationship comes hot on the heels of the ESPN-DraftKings tie-in which took effect at the start of this month.
Many more deals between major broadcasters and iGaming players are likely to follow.
Real-time prediction market data is set to become a vital part of latter-day reporting.
And in a welcome nod to newsroom nostalgia it will feature the return of that beloved prop – the good old fashioned news ticker.
Tick-tock. It seems nothing can stop the march of prediction markets.
