On Thursday, commercial prediction market Kalshi self-certified three new contracts:
- Will [person] attend the Masters in [year]
- What will the tariff rate on [country] be on [date]
- Will [person] be the next elected President of South Korea
The Masters market is currently one of Kalshi’s most high-profile. Kalshi’s market on the Masters Tournament winner reached $86.8 million in trade volume on Sunday, over three times what its Super Bowl market generated.
On their face, these markets don’t have anything to do with each other besides covering major news items. However, all three of these markets are part of Kalshi’s strategy to give customers the ability to trade on everything.
Every event is somebody’s risk
Kalshi is the Arabic word for “everything,” a purposeful choice of the founders who wanted to make their mission clear from the beginning. The company’s goal is to make a prediction market available for any event.
Rather than try to bundle stocks that may go up if an event occurs, traders and financial institutions can trade on the event. It’s a more reliable way to cash out from an event that could impact a person or business.
However, most traders are speculating instead of hedging. Those speculators are functionally important even if they’re only on the platform for entertainment. Some markets, like whether a certain person will attend the Masters, double as customer acquisition markets and hedging tools.
Prediction markets 'future of news' for sports too
Kalshi’s initial filing for the “will this person attend the Masters” market has broad appeal. This market may be designed for an advertiser hoping to attract certain celebrity attention at the Masters. However, functionally, this is an entertainment market with broad appeal, and customers could see many more markets like it. Looking for someone in the crowd at the Masters is a fun way to engage customers with the tournament.
On Monday morning, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour posted about the “large share of users [who] told [Kalshi] they only watched the Masters because they had a position on it.”
If Kalshi is creating new fans of the sport as Mansour claims, markets with mass appeal will be even easier to launch and justify.
