Kalshi rolled out the ability for users to build same-game parlays for the two Monday Night Football games.
Here’s what I saw on Monday night and know as of now:
It seems like you could only parlay bets within a game…so you could do “combinations” either on the New York Jets vs. Miami Dolphins game or the Denver Broncos vs. Cincinnati Bengals game.
You could combine bets on touchdown scorers, moneylines (or spreads) and the point total for the individual games.
You could only bet parlays before the game, not during the game.
Parlays are not yet available for future NFL games.
It didn’t appear that you could parlay the “no” side of touchdown props.
You apparently can “cash out” of a parlay if there is a buyer:
I won one of my three parlays that I hastily bet when I first noticed the functionality was live:
For a launch of a limited form of parlays, I have to say it was pretty good. It was a huge improvement over the prebuilt parlays Kalshi offered for a brief time earlier this football season:
It comes pretty close to replicating the experience of placing a parlay at a sportsbook.
The UI will tell you whether your legs have hit or missed during the game.
Prices were at least similar to what you would find at a sportsbook.
I got my first attempt rejected because of a price change.
The two parlays I had on the late game on Monday were not yet graded more than an hour after the game ended.
Overall, I would bet parlays again at Kalshi.
The march toward a more complete and complex sports betting product continues at Kalshi at a rapid pace. Next up (I imagine) will be more player props for football and an expanded ability to place parlays, both before and perhaps during games. After that will be offering more than just moneylines for basketball, hockey and other sports.
But for now, Kalshi is getting closer to emulating a sportsbook in quick order, an idea that had been dismissed in the gaming industry earlier this year.
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Prediction markets news roundup
The SEC/CFTC roundtable + prediction markets: For those hoping for a lot of material chatter about prediction markets and sports event contracts at Monday’s event about harmonization between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, you were likely left very disappointed. The meeting did feature Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, but sports betting didn’t really come up. There was also some hope that Polymarket might announce its US launch at the event, but that didn’t happen either.
The newsworthy part from a prediction markets standpoint was merely that these companies had a seat at the table, something that would have been laughable even a year ago. Kalshi, at this time last year, was a small platform that didn’t have election or sports betting. Polymarket was banned from the United States. Today, Kalshi is on a rocket ship and Polymarket is about to reenter the US.
Event Horizon contributor Andrew Kim kind of nailed it from where I sit:
Tweets from Mansour and Coplan mostly echoed that “being there” was the story:
I listened to the part of the roundtable with the CEOs, but there just wasn’t a ton of meat on the bone, at least from the narrow world view of prediction markets. Luckily, the nice folks at InGame still did a roundup of what was said, if you’re interested in the nuts and bolts:
“Coplan, whose platform does not yet accept U.S. customers, said that while he wasn’t looking for ‘blanket approval,’ rules should be flexible enough to prevent major platforms from operating offshore. ‘I’m not here advocating for, ‘Hey, give us a free pass to compete in a way that the CME cannot,’ but if you want young entrepreneurs to compete and build products that can be competitive on a global scale, it’s net negative to go and – from a regulatory perspective – drive that offshore,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying go and do whatever. It’s going to take players like Polymarket and other players in decentralized finance to go and be thoughtful about what we can comply with and what might need work.’”
“Mansour did not advocate strongly for an innovation exemption. His business has worked within the CFTC-regulated environment, or challenged the regulator in court, rather than operating offshore. ‘I don’t feel strongly about a need for exemption versus not,’ he said. ‘What I do feel strongly about is a level playing field. …We as a company have had level playing fields at times, and then have not in other ways.’”
Here’s the public statement from SEC Chair Paul Atkins. And one from CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham.
Coverage from Bloomberg (paywall) on the larger meeting: SEC’s Atkins Sees Crypto Work With CFTC as ‘Job No. 1 Right Now’
There were still several notable moments at the event that were less material and more just interesting around prediction markets:
Investors are betting big on ‘prediction markets’ Kalshi and Polymarket—will the gamble pay off? (Fortune, paywall): “Over Labor Day weekend, social media lit up with observations that President Trump had not been seen in public for several days. Soon, rumors swirled about Trump’s health—and ghoulish hashtags even claimed he had died. Yes, it was just another weekend in the online rumor mill, but this round of speculation came with a novel twist: a flurry of bets about the president’s health on so-called prediction market sites. On Kalshi, the odds of Vice President JD Vance taking office by the end of the year shot up to 15%. For Kalshi customers, a wager of $15 would mean a payout of $100 if Vance took office.”
Odds of a government shutdown rise to 70% in prediction markets (CNBC): “Prediction markets are pricing in about a 70% chance the federal government will shut down on Wednesday, reflecting growing skepticism that lawmakers will strike a last-minute deal to keep agencies funded. Users on Kalshi and Polymarket increased their bets on a government closure after the Labor Department said it won’t release Friday’s key jobs report, watched closely on Wall Street, in case of a shutdown. Over the weekend, the odds were at around 50%.”
The notable thing here is we are just seeing mainstream outlets lead with prediction markets odds more and more as time goes on. Outside of the debates around sports event contracts, there’s a pretty good argument that the political and financial markets are interesting and useful for pricing the likelihood of events.
Robinhood Shares Climb 12% on Growth in Prediction-Market Trades (Bloomberg via MSN): “Robinhood Markets Inc. shares rose over 12% after Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Tenev said the online-stock brokerage has made strong inroads into prediction markets, where people wager on elections, sporting matches and other widely followed events. The executive said in a post on X on Monday that Robinhood customers have now transacted more than 4 billion of such event contracts, 2 billion of which were in the third quarter alone.”
