Tech companies and social media barkers keep debating whether prediction markets offering sports event contracts will erode the sportsbook business.
While recent analysis from Genius Sports asserts there is “almost no overlap” of customers eager to speculate on pop culture and politics and the spread of the Seahawks game, sports betting consumes a massive chunk of the wagering volume at Kalshi and Polymarket. And large American sports betting brands like FanDuel and DraftKings wouldn’t be jumping in unless there was money to be made.
If there is truly a sizeable intersection, Fanatics might have found a way to drive right through it. FanDuel and DraftKings should hurry up. The Fanatics Markets app that launched on Dec. 3 is currently the best prediction market app available in the United States. With caveats.
The reasons, for this reviewer, are simple: It operates intuitively, it looks good (like the type of app American customers are used to in a sportsbook), and the bro-energy volume is nil. The app quickly takes users where they want to go, without the extra or annoying reset or wonky interface of those present-day prediction market apps.
If a sports bettor is inclined to dabble in prediction markets for the first time, the Fanatics app will be very familiar to their traditional wagering app. If they’ve been to Kalshi, Polymarket, or Robinhood, they will notice the difference.
Set up quickly, start predicting stuff
New customers — it’s available in 24 states — will immediately notice how seamless the process is to get started. Waiting on a takeout order Friday night, with every single television in the pub running NFL replays, I popped open the phone and quickly found the standalone Fanatics Markets app in the Google play store.
Fanatics has long touted the speed of its registration process for the sportsbook app, and Markets keeps up the pace. Key in the process is that Fanatics already had much of my validation information stored from a hat or shirt I’d previously purchased from its apparel wing. Upon entering the email associated with my universal Fanatics account, the entirety of registration windows pre-filled, correctly, allowing me to tap through to the two-factor validation process.
Then I soon moved on to associating a funding source, which took less than a minute because so much of my identifying information — crucially, age — was already available to Fanatics. Creepy, yes, but it’s a creepy world and, wow, does that creepiness hustle things up.
I was instantly on to perusing markets, which are comprised of typical sports like football, basketball, hockey and world soccer fare — there’s no parlays — and the pop culture, economic, and political offerings associated with prediction markets before the ascendancy of sports events contracts. As for politics, I was able to plunk down a couple bucks on the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee, but the breadth of offerings from Kalshi were not there. That said, I wasn’t put off that I couldn’t find a market on the first Trump cabinet member to be fired into the sun before Jan. 1. If you are, this may not be your app.
There were no squiggly lines and tiny little numbers like on a stock-trading app. There were red and green arrows and numbers, which was sufficient for my depth. Green good! Again, if you need the other …
Fanatics Markets in review: less cringe
Ultimately, the non-sports offerings seemed more civil, more fun, or — perhaps more appropriately — less anarchistic. While other prediction markets, as Front Office Sports so eloquently put it recently, leverage outlandishness to elevate a national profile, offering war markets and speculation on hurricanes, there was no mayhem on which to bet at Fanatics. That will likely send the nihilists back to prediction markets that offer such nonsense, but I felt better about myself as the takeout food finally arrived.
Eschewing the sportsbook monopoly app in my state for the weekend, I speculated on BYU and Texas Tech football, trading in and out enough times for a small profit, and a feeling that I’d accomplished something. The NFL Sunday slate went well, also, except for me failing to dump the Bucs against the Saints.
I predict casual sports bettors will like this.
