Meta's reported Arena app is less a direct Kalshi clone than a test of whether prediction markets can become another feed habit, with points first and regulation later.
Mark Zuckerberg has asked a small Meta team to build a standalone prediction markets app called Arena, according to The New York Times, and you don't need much imagination to see why the company is trying it now. Kalshi and Polymarket have turned event contracts from a specialist product into a daily betting habit. Meta has spent two decades turning habits into ad inventory.
Arena is still early and Meta hasn't announced a public launch. The reported plan is simple: a smartphone app, separate from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, where users make predictions on sports, politics and major news events with a video game-style points system rather than real money. Meta hasn't ruled out real-money betting later, the Times reported, and that caveat is the part regulators and competitors will read twice.
The timing is not subtle. The Times reported that Kalshi and Polymarket handled about $50 billion in trades last year and have already passed $130 billion this year. The Financial Times reported this week that Kalshi is in talks to raise money at about a $40 billion valuation, after a $1 billion round last month valued it at $22 billion. Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Morgan Stanley were among the names attached to that earlier financing. This is no longer a side street of crypto culture.
Meta's advantage isn't market design. It is distribution. More than 3.5 billion people use at least one Meta app daily, according to figures cited in reports on Arena, and Meta plans to point users toward the new app from its existing platforms. Kalshi has regulatory status and a finance pitch. Polymarket has crypto-native culture and a large global audience. Meta has the button. If Arena ever sits close enough to Reels or Instagram search, the customer acquisition math changes for everyone else.
That doesn't mean Arena is a real competitor on day one. Frankly, a points app is closer to fantasy sports or a social forecasting game than to Kalshi's CFTC-regulated exchange. But that may be the point. By launching without cash wagers, Meta can test whether ordinary users will come back every day to predict Fed decisions, election results, football scores and whatever argument is moving through the feed that afternoon, without immediately walking into the same state-by-state gambling fights facing the sector.
The regulatory line still matters. Kalshi has fought states that say its event contracts look like unlicensed sports betting, while the CFTC has argued for federal authority over these markets. Polymarket has its own history, including a 2022 CFTC settlement that pushed it away from U.S. users and a later path back through a regulated derivatives exchange acquisition. Meta can avoid much of that if Arena stays on play money. If it flips to cash, the company's size would pull prediction markets into a much louder fight over whether these products are financial contracts, gambling, or both.
There is another reason Meta's move should make the existing players nervous. Prediction markets don't just produce trades. They produce a running map of what users think will happen next. For a company built on attention and behavioral signals, that data is useful even before a dollar changes hands. You can imagine markets around elections, earnings, celebrity trials, sports injuries, product launches, you name it. Every wager is also a statement of interest.
Meta has tried this territory before. The company launched Forecast in 2020, during the pandemic, and shut it down in 2022. That history should keep everyone from treating Arena as inevitable. Meta's copycat record is mixed: Instagram Stories and Reels became central to the company, while Poke, Lasso, Bonfire and other experiments disappeared. Arena could join either list.
Still, the signal is plain. When Meta decides a category is worth copying, the incumbents have already proved there is something there. Kalshi and Polymarket now have to show that their advantage is more than being early. Meta doesn't have to build the best prediction market first. It only has to find out whether your impulse to bet on the future can be made as casual as scrolling a feed.
Also read: The New York Times is now arguing Microsoft built a machine specifically designed to steal journalism | OpenAI is raiding Apple's Vision Pro talent as the headset quietly dies | Robert Kuok's grandson is staking €5.3 billion on Italy becoming Europe's AI infrastructure capital
