🔮 Want To Bet How Big The Prediction Market Will Become?

In today’s newsletter I ask the question how big the prediction market will become, Tesla is becoming a SaaS company, Heineken’s Dos Equis is bringing back their "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads, Meta’s Threads is now bigger than Twitter (I mean X), Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce just wrote a book called “No Dumb Questions: And All of Our Dumbest Answers”, the U.S. DoD is investing $1 billion dollars in Aerojet Rocketdyne, Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke just became the largest private landowner in the U.S., Matthew McConaughey just filed with the USPTO to trademark three of his catchphrases including “Alright Alright Alright”, and Fanatics has partnered with OBB Media to create Fanatics Studios.

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🔮 Want To Bet How Big The Prediction Market Will Become?

Imagine you've got a crystal ball, but instead of hazy mist it's filled with cold hard cash in the form of the wisdom of the crowds. This is the reality of prediction markets, which are moving into a new era where betting on the future's becoming the nation's new pastime.

According to a new report by Citizens Financial Group, prediction markets could become a $1 trillion dollar market by the end of this decade. That's a massive number that sounds like it’s made up, but the growth's real and platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are capitalizing on it right now. Today you can bet on, er, I mean “predict”, anything and everything from elections, to how a movie'll do at the box office, to interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, and even what color tie President Donald Trump'll wear next Tuesday. The prediction market industry's estimated to generate $2 billion dollars in revenue in 2026, and it's expected to generate over $10 billion dollars a year by the end of this decade.

Polymarket, founded by Shayne Coplan, is one of the biggest prediction markets in the world. As their platform's grown in popularity, its user base's grown to over 1.3 million unique users, and 477,000 monthly active traders, who've invested over $21.5 billion dollars in total trading volume in 2025. The platform gained popularity when people wagered an estimated $3.6 billion dollars on the 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Polymarket recently raised a $2 billion dollar funding round led by Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, which valued Polymarket at $9 billion dollars. That brings the total amount of money raised by Polymarket to $2.3 billion dollars across seven funding rounds, including from the VC firm Sequoia Capital, and famous investors like Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, who invested in a $45 million dollars funding round.

Kalshi, co-founded by Luana Lopes Lara and Tarek Mansour, is the other 800-pound company in the prediction markets industry. Kalshi's total trading volume in 2025 was approximately $23.8 billion dollars, from their over 2 million unique users. In 2025 Robinhood Markets’ CEO Vladimir Tenev partnered with Kalshi to offer their users event contracts by integrating Kalshi's prediction market tech into Robinhood’s platform. Kalshi's latest funding round was a $1 billion dollar Series E in December 2025, which valued the company at $11 billion dollars, and was led by VC firms Paradigm, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz. With this funding round Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara became the youngest self-made billionaire, with a net worth of $1.3 billion dollars.

The size of the prediction market industry's growing so fast that it's starting to rival the market size of the traditional sportsbooks market, and is estimated to surpass it within a decade. The global sports betting market size's estimated to be between $109-$155 billion dollars as of 2025, and is expected to grow to $256.52 billion dollars in 2030, with a CAGR of 10.54%. While sports betting's been a huge market, the prediction market industry has a larger total addressable market size of as much as $500 trillion dollars, thanks to the opportunity for investors to bet on every conceivable event in the world from corporate mergers, to global conflicts, to presidential elections.

And where there’s money to be made, there’s fraud to be committed. Prediction markets've already made a name for themselves as being ripe for insider trading. I’m not saying someone used insider information, but just before Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was captured by the U.S. one anonymous trader made a $436,759 dollar profit by betting on his capture. That’s pretty insanely specific. It's me wondering how many other world leaders people're betting'll be captured by the U.S.. This trader made most of his $30,000 dollar bet, I mean investment, just a few hours before the White House announced the capture of Nicolas Maduro. That’s either not a coincidence, or this person's the best luck in the world and should probably play the new Powerball drawing. There was another case of a French trader who won $85 million dollars after betting on Polymarket that Donald Trump'd win the U.S. presidential election. He used a network of accounts to spread his bets out over more than 11 accounts, and his winnings've been tough to trace. Some experts suggest he may've made even more than the $85 million dollars that's been reported in the news. These high stakes wagers show how people with specific inside information, or really strong/lucky convictions can turn their bets into millions of dollars.

The 16th century philosopher Sir Francis Bacon once famously said "knowledge is power", and that's never been more true than with today’s prediction markets. Leaders in the industry, like Polymarkets and Kalshi, are blazing a trail to a future $1 trillion dollar market, where ideas can be turned into tradable assets, and there’s a market for everyone’s opinion.

Quick Hits

🛞 Business

Elon Musk just announced that Tesla will stop selling the Full Self-Driving system as a $8,000 dollars one-time purchase, and will instead move to more of a SaaS model that will be a $99 dollars monthly subscription. This change is part of Elon Musk’s plan to reach 10 million active subscribers that could bring in $12 billion dollars a year for Tesla.

With that kind of growth, Elon Musk shouldn’t have any trouble hitting his compensation package targets that could eventually be worth $1 trillion dollars in stock.

Buyer beware - bet against Elon Musk at your own risk!

🍺 Entertainment

Heineken’s Dos Equis is bringing back their "Most Interesting Man in the World" advertising campaign, with actor Jonathan Goldsmith reprising his famous role after nearly a decade away, where presumably he was busy with some of the most interesting side projects in the world. The original campaign, which ran from 2006 to 2016, became a cultural phenomenon and helped Dos Equis more than 3X their sales thanks to those ads. Then in 2016, for some reason that defies logic, Heineken’s Dos Equis retired the fictional "Most Interesting Man in the World" character in a farewell ad sending him to Mars, to instead modernize the campaign in a failed effort to try and attract younger drinkers by introducing a younger, more action-oriented "Interesting Man" to try and boost their sales which were getting stale. The public wasn’t having it, and Heineken’s Dos Equis' retail sales dropped by 8% as of 2025.

Now Heineken is investing $30 million dollars in a new marketing campaign to reintroduce the "Most Interesting Man in the World" to the public, beginning on January 19, 2026 with an ad during the college football national championship game. The global beer market is valued at $881.9 billion dollars as of 2025, and Heineken is hoping that by bringing back the debonair persona of the "Most Interesting Man in the World" they will able to reverse their losses and help their Dos Equis brand regain its footing in the highly competitive market for sophisticated beer drinkers.

🧵 Tech

Meta’s Threads, which I’m now going to refer to as the X killer, has grown to over 35 million daily active mobile users, surpassing Elon Musk’s Twitter (I mean X’s) 34 million daily active mobile users. Ouch! Elon Musk is not going to like that!

📚 Book Club

Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce are expanding beyond their New Heights podcast by releasing a 240 page book called “No Dumb Questions: And All of Our Dumbest Answers” with publisher William Morrow. The book, which will retail for $30 dollars, plays off a segment on their New Heights podcast where Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce answer fan questions sent in through social media and a hotline about anything ranging from football rules to silly debates like how many holes does a straw have.

In August of 2024 Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce signed a 3-year $100 million dollar deal with Amazon’s Wondery for their New Heights podcast. Their YouTube channel has 3.16 million subscribers, and has over 1.13 billion lifetime views. The New Heights podcast routinely ranks in the Top 5 podcasts for Sports on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and often holds the #1 spot during the NFL season.

Combined Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce have won a total of 4 Super Bowl championships, and have earned a combined $194.3 million dollars from their football salaries, and that doesn’t even take into consideration their endorsements. For 2026 Travis Kelce is on track to haul in between $30-$35 million dollars in endorsement income from a massive list of brands including Nike, State Farm, Bud Light, Pfizer, McDonald’s, Papa John’s, DirecTV, Sleep Number, T-Mobile, Old Spice, Tide, Lowe’s, Subway, General Mills, Experian, and Casa Azul Tequila. Then we have Jason Kelce, the oldest of the two brothers, who retired from the Philadelphia Eagles in 2024, and is expected to tackle between $200$25 million dollars in endorsements from brands including Old Spice, Nike, Bose, Campbell’s Soup, Tide, Accelerator Active Energy, and Buffalo Wild Wings. He also pulls down around $8 million dollars a year from his contract with ESPN where he serves as an analyst on Monday Night Countdown.

It’s good to be a Kelce brother!

🚀 Space

The U.S. Department of Defense is investing $1 billion dollars in Aerojet Rocketdyne to fund the expansion of their solid rocket motors used in various missile systems including Tomahawks and Patriot interceptors. This massive $1 billion dollar infusion of funding will be part of the spun off company, giving the U.S. Department of Defense an equity stake of 10% that will convert to common equity when the company goes public later in 2026.

So the U.S. government is investing in startups and IPOs? Now I’ve seen everything!

🏞️ Real Estate

Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke recently became the largest private landowner in the United States with a total of 2.6 million acres across several states, including Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Texas, and New Mexico, as well as the massive 1 million acre Douglas Lake Ranch in British Columbia, Canada. In total Stan Kroenke owns a land portfolio valued at approximately $2.5 billion dollars.

Stan Kroenke also owns the Arsenal FC soccer team, the Denver Nuggets basketball team, the Colorado Avalanche hockey team, the Colorado Rapids MLS soccer team, and the Colorado Mammoth lacrosse team.

Stan Kroenke made his $21.3 billion dollar fortune by investing in real estate development, and it didn’t hurt that he married Walmart heiress Ann Walton. With his “connections” he developed commercial shopping centers that were anchored by Walmarts, which certainly helped him grow his real estate empire, and rake in some significant rental income along the way from all those Walmart locations.

™️ AI

Matthew McConaughey just filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark three of his catchphrases, including his famous “alright alright alright” from the 1993 coming of age movie “Dazed and Confused”, "I mean... what are we gonna do?", and "Just keep livin', right?" which is the name of the nonprofit organization that Matthew McConaughey founded with his wife Camila McConaughey to provide high school students with the necessary tools to lead active lives and make healthy choices for a better future.

These registrations will cover various goods and services like clothing and entertainment, which helps Matthew McConaughey protect his brand identity from unauthorized artificial intelligence voice clones that could cost him millions of dollars in potential endorsement revenue. But it’s not like my man is hurting. Matthew McConaughey has a net worth of around $160 million dollars, and he’s cemented his legacy as one of Hollywood’s coolest actors of all time.

In total, J.K. Livin Brands, Inc. filed eight applications covering both sound marks (for his voice) and motion marks (for his likeness and specific facial expressions) to establish a federal "legal perimeter" around his persona.

Alright then.

🎬 Sports

Michael Rubin’s Fanatics has just launched a joint venture with Michael Ratner’s OBB Media to create Fanatics Studios, which will create original programming including feature films, documentaries, and digital series. Fanatics Studios aims to reach $100 million dollars in revenue in 2026, and will create both scripted and unscripted content, as well as live events at the intersection of sports and culture for their customer base of 100 million fans. Fanatics is valued at more than $30 billion dollars, and employs more than 22,000 people worldwide. For 2026 the company is expecting to haul in more than $13 billion in revenue. Now that’s a grand slam!

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.