Kalshi and Polymarket are moving insanely fast right now - feels like the Betfair era is coming to an end.
Kalshi just announced yesterday: “Kalshi goes global.”
For the first time, it’s open to users in 140+ countries under one global model with a unified liquidity pool — totally unique in prediction markets. Valuation is already around $5B and climbing.
Polymarket just secured a $2B investment from the NYSE parent (ICE), valuing it around $10B. That’s huge and shows how fast this space is going mainstream.
Betfair Exchange is probably worth no more than $2B now - and dropping fast as they keep shutting down markets and squeezing their core users with the premium charge. My guess is they’ll end up selling the Exchange to either Kalshi or Polymarket by 2030.
Kalshi and Polymarket
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sionascaig
- Posts: 1727
- Joined: Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:38 am
It was "valued" at £2bn in June...
Seems a big leap to me..
But in the context of "Tech megacaps lose $770 billion in value as Nasdaq suffers steepest drop since April" at close yesterday - maybe the US tech bubble has started to burst?
That's way off, and the premium charge doesn't even exist now.
Yeah, my estimate was probably on the high side. Betfair Exchange has been in structural decline for years, with no real turnaround in sight. Even with solid margins, it’s been losing momentum for a decade. A realistic multiple would be maybe 4–6× EBITDA, putting its standalone value closer to £0.5–1 billion, not much more. Of course it’s hard to give a precise valuation since they don’t break out the Exchange’s financials anymore. Someone here mentioned it only made around £5m profit last year, which sounds incredibly low — but maybe plausible if you factor in salaries, marketing, compliance and overheads easily north of £100m.
As for the premium charge, it was more of a rebranding exercise than the removal of the underlying issue. But honestly, I don’t think the biggest problem anymore is the so-called expert fee, it’s the fact that they’ve effectively pulled out of most major European countries and seem determined to keep going down the same path.
There is actually a good market for creative types.
I saw a job adverised in US offering $50k a year for someone to offer wagerwire cashout images. (They have a secondary market where u can resell a multiple(parlay) in play, at much better value than the cash-outs offered by the mainstream thieves.
https://www.wagerwire.com/slips
Competition is a good thing. Betfair has a limited life span IMHO.
I saw a job adverised in US offering $50k a year for someone to offer wagerwire cashout images. (They have a secondary market where u can resell a multiple(parlay) in play, at much better value than the cash-outs offered by the mainstream thieves.
https://www.wagerwire.com/slips
Competition is a good thing. Betfair has a limited life span IMHO.
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