It was a pretty busy Wednesday night for SharpX Analytics, as the market-making operation quoted more than 200,000 combo requests during the NFL’s opening night battle between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.
And by the final whistle, SigmaSquirrel, one of the company’s principals, was already thinking about how much busier Sunday will get.
“Our head of trading operations reported a 30x increase in request volume in the six hours before kickoff versus the average for the preseason games,” said SigmaSquirrel. “Wednesday’s RFQ flow for this game and time window was 5.5 times the busiest of the preseason games. It was massive. The margins on winning RFQ quotes were lower than we saw on the preseason matchups. It was a very competitive marketplace, and traders on the request side benefited from extremely tight prices.”
And while SharpX’s 200,000-plus requests covered its activity across markets Wednesday, the jump in football requests offered a preview of what’s to happen Sunday.
SharpX responds to requests for quotes, or RFQs, by providing a price on a proposed position involving multiple selections, commonly referred to as “combos.” Most of those requests do not become trades with the firm. Its request count measures the demand for quotes coming through its operation and reflects what markets it’s willing to price, not completed betting volume.
To see the trading that actually took place across exchanges, Aldrin Research has some eye-opening numbers.
To wit: The football game generated over $140 million in trading volume across nine exchanges tracked by Aldrin. That number exceeded the $134.2 million traded on all 15 MLB games played Tuesday. Both figures include trading before game day.
In other words, the NFL needed one midweek game to match an entire baseball slate.
But in the requests SharpX received — due to the fact it only quotes RFQs — football and baseball were often sharing a ticket.
“What traders did was pair their NFL position with MLB positions. The most common paired RFQ was the Seahawks and the Dodgers. Those two legs showed up in 31% of our staked volume,” SigmaSquirrel said.
Picking the winner also accounted for the largest portion of trading on Kalshi, according to Aldrin.
Big volume
Kalshi recorded $105.5 million in game-related volume, approximately 79% of the tracked total, with $58.8 million coming from moneyline markets. Point spread markets added $13.3 million, player touchdown markets $7.4 million, and the game total $6.3 million.
DKeX followed with $11 million in overall game volume, while Novig recorded $8 million. These are trading-volume figures, not equivalent amounts of sportsbook handle.
For SharpX, the straightforward selections often came in relatively short combinations.
“Two-leg RFQs were 48.5% of all volume. Fourteen percent had six or more legs. The average was 3.8 legs, and the median was three,” SigmaSquirrel said.
That leaves plenty of room for the weekend to change the picture. Wednesday gave bettors one NFL game to pair with baseball. Sunday gives them a full football slate, after Saturday’s college games.
SigmaSquirrel expects the requests to follow.
“Sunday is easily going to be the most RFQ volume on prediction markets to date. That’s my prediction,” he said. “Again, this NFL opener was 30 times a preseason game, and the preseason games were healthy volume.”
