Polymarket's Rise as Top U.S. Sports App Amid Legal Debate

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00:00For those folks who like to download apps, it's very easy to find the information that Sam and I

00:05are going to deliver now to you, really more Sam than me, over in the App Store. If you go and you

00:11search apps, I mean, it's sort of incredible that a sports betting app would be the number one app

00:17in the country, Sam. But here we are. And it's not a, I probably misstated that, it's not a sports

00:23betting app, right? It's a prediction app, as they say. But I mean, Sam, it's just the stories

00:29keep writing themselves here. And certainly there are people in California, and I'm going to guess

00:34Texas, and wherever sports betting is not legal, they're finding their ways around it. And their

00:38way around it is which app? Yeah, it's Polymarket, Craig, which is, as you said, it's not technically

00:47a sports betting app. But currently, the only thing you can do on it in the US is actually trade on

00:52sports. And you have a number of states and a number of tribal groups and a whole host of people

00:57who say that actually is sports betting. But ahead of its full return to the US, it's actually

01:02already number one in sports apps on the App Store. It had been banned a couple years ago

01:08under the Biden administration. It reached a settlement with the administration. But then

01:13this year, as sports prediction markets have really boomed, the Department of Justice lifted

01:17the ban, allowing Polymarket to reenter the US. Now, it's not fully back in the US yet yet,

01:22which is kind of what makes this even more impressive that it's already number one in the

01:28sports section in the App Store. It's only being offered to a limited number of users,

01:33people who sign up for the, you know, so called beta testing on the app. The app has had a number

01:38of updates in the past couple weeks, which kind of makes us think that it's going to launch

01:42pretty much any day now, before the end of the year, I would expect and it comes at a time when

01:47its long rival Kalshi, which also does prediction markets and also has really been making waves in

01:53sports. They've already done $11 billion in sports trades since September, which is obviously when

01:58football season started. And now 95% of their volume is tied up in sports. Polymarket, when it

02:04was in the US, was not a sports app. It was only, you know, trading on elections, trading on the

02:10weather, other pop culture events. But now it comes back to a market which is dominated by sports.

02:15It's one of the reasons you're seeing it on the sports category in the App Store, even though,

02:19again, not technically a sports book. And it also comes at a time when, you know, founder Shane

02:25Copeland just did an interview with 60 Minutes, kind of positioning the app for its launch to the

02:30US. It just got a big investment from the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. So it's really

02:35ramping things up and going to return at any time. Meanwhile, DraftKings and FanDuel are getting ready

02:40to launch their own prediction market. So Polymarket will be coming back at a time when

02:45the competitive landscape is dominated by Kalshi. And soon it's going to have FanDuel and DraftKings

02:50in there as well, which I'm really eager to see what their products look like and how the timing

02:55kind of impacts the use of Polymarket. Will it be number one in the App Store for the next couple

03:00months? Who knows? Will it fall once FanDuel and DraftKings start offering their sports products to

03:06California and Texas? All of this will be really interesting to watch, especially with,

03:10you know, the huge amounts of investments pouring in. This is now a company valued at around $15

03:16billion. And it's not even technically back in the US yet. So got to imagine there'll be a lot

03:21of the more interesting stuff to come when it is fully back.