Betr, the daily fantasy site co-owned by Joey Levy and influencer Jake Paul, has bought approval to operate as a prediction market broker, having acquired a firm that was registered with the National Futures Association (NFA).
The business co-founded by Paul bought Chicago-based introducing broker ACM Futures, also known as Ascent Capital Markets, thereby obtaining its Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and NFA registration, NFA filings dated May 14 show.
Introducing brokers can partner with designated contract markets (DCMs), which are exchanges like Kalshi or Crypto.com, to offer the exchange’s contracts to their users. Existing introducing brokers include Fanatics Markets and DraftKings Predictions.
Introducing brokers are not allowed to directly hold customer funds, but in practice, existing introducing brokers have set up systems that make this go largely unnoticed.
The NFA is an industry self-regulatory body for brokers dealing with CFTC-regulated commodities. Though it is not itself an arm of the federal government, the CFTC effectively delegates registration of futures commission merchants and introducing brokers to the NFA.
Betr follows same path as Fanatics
Betr is the second business in the sports betting or fantasy sports world to avoid the wait for NFA approval by simply buying a registered broker. In August, Fanatics bought Paragon Global Markets.
ACM was approved to be an introducing broker all the way back in 2011. Like Paragon, ACM dealt in traditional commodity futures.
Its website says that it “proudly serves clients near and around Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Houston, Miami, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Hawaii,” as well as in “Taiwan, Ukraine, England, Australia and more.”
It appears that Betr will use the license to offer Polymarket US’ contracts. In a March press release, Betr said it would “launch prediction markets powered by Polymarket directly within the Betr super app, making events contracts across sports, politics, culture, and more available to one million paying users.”
Initial application sat for seven months
Betr had initially submitted an application for NFA membership in early October. However, there was no progress on that application for seven months.
Companies seeking NFA approval have seen a wide range of timelines to be registered, but Betr’s wait has been especially long. DraftKings’ application took almost six months, while PrizePicks’ took four months.
The NFA website notes that applications may take “six weeks or longer” to be approved.
By buying ACM, Betr no longer needs to wait and is now an active introducing broker.
PredictionMarketPulse reported this week that Betr’s existing application had switched to “Not an NFA Member.” It now appears that this was because the application was redundant.
