The Sweep, October 22 — DraftKings Says It Is "Clear No. 3," Kalshi Says Sports Is Down to 65 Per Cent, the Dream Rout Golden State, and a Text About "Chum

Thursday, October 22. Jason Robins, interviewed by CNBC's Contessa Brewer at the NEXTPredict conference in New York, said DraftKings' exchange is already "the clear No. 3" in prediction markets, a few months after launch. Aldrin Research's numbers, as cited by Covers, back him up: $1.04 billion in notional volume in the week to October 18, a 3.57 per cent share, up from 2.33 per cent in late September. Third, behind Kalshi and Polymarket, is still a long way behind. More revealing was what he said about the product: "I think unequivocally, the sportsbook experience is a better customer experience for most customers," he told the room, per NEXT.io, and he expects states to "turn to taxing it like they do sports betting" if the markets survive the courts. A sportsbook CEO calling his own exchange the worse product and promising it a tax bill was honest, and he is hedged either way. Later that afternoon, Underdog's Jeremy Levine said operators have spent well over a billion dollars marketing prediction markets this NFL season, and that it will pay off for "one or two" of them.

Wednesday, October 21. The other number from the exchanges this week came from Kalshi's Tarek Mansour on Reuters' Econ World podcast, per Covers: sports contracts are now about 65 per cent of Kalshi's revenue, against about 95 per cent nine months ago. On a possible Supreme Court case he said "we are very confident in our legal position" and would not put odds on it. A company that lives on sports needs the 65 to keep falling, because every state attacking it, Ohio included as of today, is attacking the sports contracts specifically.

Wednesday, October 21. The Atlanta Dream beat the Golden State Valkyries 97-71 in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals to lead the series 2-1. Angel Reese had 21 points and 12 rebounds, Rhyne Howard 16 and Naz Hillmon 15. Gabby Williams led Golden State with 15. The league moved the game, and Saturday's Game 4, from Gateway Center Arena to State Farm Arena, and both sold out. After losing the opener, Atlanta has won two straight. A 26-point Finals win does not settle a series, but Golden State's offence needs a new answer by Saturday.

Wednesday, October 21. ESPN's David Purdum reported that Clark County prosecutors have charged Steven Vasquez, a former Fresno State and San Jose State player, and Matthew J. Martin, a former DraftKings sports trader in Las Vegas, with Class C felonies over unders bet on Mykell Robinson's statistics in Fresno State's January 7, 2025 game against Colorado State. Both were arrested in September and have pleaded not guilty. A warrant is out for Robinson, who is playing in Ecuador. Samuel Silverman, another former DraftKings employee, was arrested in May. Martin's lawyer says his client "looks forward to proving his innocence in a court of law." DraftKings says the betting did not happen on its platform and that neither man set college basketball odds. These are charges, not findings. The underlying game is 21 months old, and the news is that the case now reaches someone who worked at a sportsbook. We look at what a federal exchange would have done with the same trade in today's piece on the CFTC's insider-trading line.

Wednesday, October 21. In the federal case against Terry Rozier, his lawyer David Markus and Evan Corcoran, who represents co-defendant Laster, jointly asked Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall to split the February 8, 2027 trial in two, per Covers. The defence's new exhibit is a text Laster allegedly sent on March 29, 2023, six days after the game at issue: "Don't tell chum bout the bet." Rozier's side says "chum" is Rozier, which would put him outside the conversation about the bet. Markus also says NBA medical records "demonstrate conclusively" that Rozier had a foot injury. Laster's lawyer wrote that Rozier's team "will spend as much effort prosecuting Mr. Laster in this trial as the government." Two defendants whose own lawyers say they will attack each other make the strongest case for separate trials, and give a jury a preview either way. Rozier has pleaded not guilty.

Thursday, October 22. Rep. Jimmy Patronis of Florida emailed ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and the conference's board asking them to disclose their sports betting policies for staff, officials and "other interested parties" before Congress returns in November, Covers reported, following Fox News. His reasoning: "Seeing as the ACC is asking Congress for help with NIL, I believe we must have transparency." The ACC's majority backs the Protect College Sports Act, which passed the Senate 77-22 in September. It is a fair question to put to a conference asking Congress for help, and the conferences should have answered it publicly long ago.

Wednesday, October 21. Julius Randle scored 33 on 11-of-18 shooting in his first game for Brooklyn, and the Nets lost 110-103 to Charlotte. Naz Reid had 20 and 11 in his Hornets debut, the first look at the return from the LaMelo Ball trade, and Grayson Allen added 21 off the bench. In Portland the Trail Blazers beat Phoenix 124-83, a 41-point margin on the second night of the season. Phoenix will have worse nights in a long season, but probably not many.

What we are not running, and why

"Kalshi did $81.5 billion in the last 30 days." That figure is on DeFi Rate's Kalshi page and it is correct, but it counts every contract at its $1 face value. The same page puts the dollars traders actually paid over September 22 to October 21 at $18.8 billion. Wherever the first number appears without the second, it overstates the money by more than four times. We will print it only next to $18.8 billion, as here.

"The first tungsten hedge trades on Kalshi." A Bloomberg headline from Thursday. The story is paywalled, and secondary summaries name the firms involved without saying how large the hedge was. A commodity hedge on an event-contract exchange would be a real story, but we have not read it and are not repeating its details.

"Eighty per cent of prediction-market volume is sports." Attributed in NEXTPredict's live blog to an unnamed panelist, with no source or period. Mansour's 65 per cent is a revenue figure for one company. Neither supports the other, and we are not printing the 80.

"One of the ten companies Ohio ordered to stop has complied." Ohio's regulator said so on Wednesday but did not name the company, and nothing we read identifies it. We are not guessing.

Thursday Night Football odds. Searches for this week's line returned pages for 2023, 2024 and 2025 games with fresh-looking dates. We are not printing a line we cannot match to this season.

Prediction-market promo codes in the "news" results. Three different Kalshi sign-up offers, $25, $55 and $60, appeared under Thursday-dated headlines. They are marketing pages, not news, and they disagree with each other.