Kalshi Disputes Report Claiming That Prediction Markets Users Lose Money Faster

A recent report by a Wall Street analyst suggested that regular prediction market users lose money faster than their traditional sports betting peers. Needless to say, Kalshi wasn’t exactly pleased.

The Report Said Prediction Markets Favor Pro Traders

The initial report was the brainchild of Citizens analyst Jordan Bender and cited betting data to suggest that prediction market players tend to lose money faster than players on traditional sports betting platforms.

To elaborate, Bender’s report was based on Juice Reel data and postulated that the lower 25% of prediction market users lost roughly 28 cents for every dollar they spent over their first 90 days of trading event contracts. In the meantime, sports betting data suggests that new sports bettors lose only 11 cents per dollar wagered over their first three months of play.

The data also stated that the average prediction markets trader lost roughly 7% of the money they bet within three months, compared to only 1% for traditional bettors.

Bender also suggested that the nature of prediction markets favors professional traders and established trading firms rather than the average user.

Kalshi, however, was unamused.

Kalshi Disputed the Findings

Elisabeth Diana, Kalshi’s head of communications, said that the report is untruthful and claimed that it was related to what she called an “extortion attempt.” Diana also claimed that Juice Reel’s CEO had offered to “defuse” the conflict via an investment meeting with Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour.

Ricky Gold, CEO of Juice Reel, struck back, saying that Kalshi and Diana had no basis for the extortion accusations, which, according to Gold, were a “complete fabrication.” The Juice Reel CEO furthermore alleged that Kalshi representatives had contacted him to pressure him to tell Bloomberg that the Juice Reel data used in the report was inaccurate.

In response, Kalshi conceded that the report was likely not an extortion attempt. However, Kalshi still disputed the conclusion of the findings, challenging the idea that prediction markets cause players to lose more. In any case, Kalshi emphasized that its decentralized nature means that there is no house and that players technically decide the prices and play against one another.

Kalshi also said that it did not try to pressure Gold into reporting that the data was incorrect.