Sport

Prediction markets emerged as a fixture of politics last year, but now they’re making a notable splash in the big leagues, according to NBA star Tristan Thompson.

Amid a growing list of partnerships and acquisitions, it probably won’t be long before odds from platforms like Polymarket become a common way for people to gauge the pulse of their favorite teams and athletes in real-time, he said in an interview with Decrypt.

“This is going to happen,” he said, recalling how television channels like TNT began incorporating social media posts into their broadcasts years ago, allowing viewers to engage with familiar faces like Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley from their couch.

Last year, prediction markets tracked swings in the U.S. presidential election, which could play out over the course of weeks. For sports, Thompson pictures a chart on the bottom corner of his TV, which “waivers from possession to possession” for less than a handful of hours.

In practice, sporting events can last mere moments. For example, the quickest knockout in UFC history took place 5 seconds after the opening bell, and earlier this week, the MMA organization’s parent company clinched a multi-year deal with Polymarket.

As part of the arrangement, a fan prediction scoreboard is being integrated into UFC broadcasts, visualizing global fan sentiment and fight forecasts as events unfold.

In the first eight months of this year, Americans wagered $99 billion through commercial sportsbooks, up 12% from the same period a year ago, according to the American Gaming Association. And most sports broadcasts feature gambling odds.

In recent months, courts have begun tackling the question of whether prediction markets are subject to a patchwork of state gambling regulations, with some setbacks, but Thompson views their nature as distinct from your average bookie.

“Vegas and gambling are definitely big sectors in America,” he said. “More importantly, I think with prediction markets, […] it’s actually going to drive viewership ratings higher.”

By design, prediction markets allow individuals to exit wagers before they resolve. That could encourage people to follow events more closely, considering that an opportunistic exit isn’t always reflected by traditional statistics, Thompson said.

“It’s hard to tell how a game is going by just looking at the scoreboard,” he said.

Thompson himself is backing a project called Basketball.fun, where users will be able to speculate on NBA talent in a way that parallels an unaffiliated project called Football.fun. The latter project began blending elements of trading card games with fantasy sports in August.

Last month, the NHL became the first major sports league to reach a multi-year partnership with prediction markets, tapping both Polymarket and its biggest rival Kalshi. Retail brokerage Robinhood also began letting customers access sports-related prediction markets this year.

DraftKings, the fantasy sports giant, acquired prediction market company Railbird for an undisclosed amount in October. In a press release, however, the company said its offering will focus on “finance, culture, and entertainment.”