Meta is expected to enter a prediction market service similar to Polymarket and Kalshi.
On the 23rd (local time), the New York Times (NYT) reported, citing multiple internal sources, that Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg recently formed a small in-house team and ordered the development of a smartphone-based prediction market app. Prediction markets are betting platforms where people wager money or points on the outcomes of countless future events, such as sports results, award winners, elections, and major policies.
The prediction market app Meta is developing has been internally named "Arena" and is expected to operate separately from Meta's existing social networking services (SNS) such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. However, Meta plans to draw its vast existing SNS user base as Arena's initial users.
Sources said Meta is more likely to adopt a points system rather than real-money wagers, unlike existing prediction market services, but has not completely ruled out introducing real-money betting features in the future.
This is not the first time Meta has operated a prediction market service. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Meta launched the crowdsourcing prediction platform "Forecast," but shut it down after two years.
However, as the transaction aggregates of Polymarket and Kalshi reached $50 billion (about 77 trillion won) last year and have already surpassed $130 billion (about 200 trillion won) so far this year, the rapid growth of prediction markets appears to be prompting Meta to explore reentering the market.
Meta's development of a prediction market app is also seen as an extension of its so-called "copycat" strategy, under which it has rolled out services imitating Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter (now X).
Meta insiders said Arena is still in the early stages of development and its actual release remains fluid.