Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan doesn’t seem stressed about the kind of competition his prediction market may face from sportsbook operators as the crypto-based platform prepares to reenter the U.S. in a regulated fashion.
This is also coming from someone who admitted to CNBC in an interview on Wednesday to being a little freaked out when the FBI raided his home last year following Polymarket bettors correctly backing Donald Trump to win the presidency.
- Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan remains confident about competing with sportsbooks and apps like Kalshi.
- Despite past legal troubles, including an FBI raid and a CFTC settlement, Polymarket is preparing to reenter the U.S. market through its acquisition of the regulated exchange QCEX, though no timeline has been announced.
- Coplan downplayed rivals and emphasized product quality, calling Kalshi a “copycat” and stressing that Polymarket appeals to users who want to stake opinions rather than just place traditional bets.
Asked about competition and what Polymarket will do in the face of that pressure, Coplan said parallels can be drawn to how interest-rate swaps and the stock market have matured over the past century.
“The way that I think about it is, you look at sportsbooks, for example, or you look at these like consumer-trading apps, they're not exchanges, they're not marketplaces, they're front-ends for existing infrastructure,” Coplan said. “For sportsbooks, it's sort of this commodity business, and you have the odds, and you take the other side, and it's basically subject to the innovator's dilemma right now, where they take these huge margins, and now there's a better way to do it with things like Polymarket.”
Squawk Box round 2 on @CNBC this morning
— Shayne Coplan 🦅 (@shayne_coplan) July 23, 2025
talking about Polymarket's return to the US & more 🇺🇸
We're coming. pic.twitter.com/6BmFU5BJvK
As for Kalshi, the federally regulated prediction market that has been growing in the U.S. while Polymarket has remained locked out due to a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Coplan was more pointed.
“Polymarket is Polymarket and they’re a Polymarket copycat,” he said.
The comments from the CEO of “the world's largest prediction market” set the stage for what will be an interesting battle for market share when Polymarket enters the regulated market for event contracts in the U.S.
'Pretty damn big'
Polymarket plans to do so with its recently announced acquisition of CFTC-licensed exchange QCEX. When, exactly, the prediction market plans to go legit in the U.S. is to be determined; Coplan did not mention a timeline during his CNBC appearance on Wednesday.
As things stand, CFTC-regulated prediction markets such as Kalshi and PredictIt have a head start on Polymarket in the U.S., offering users the opportunity to bet "yes" or "no" on events tied to economics, politics, and (perhaps most controversially) sports. Polymarket does the same, just offshore for the moment.
Online sportsbook operators such as DraftKings and FanDuel have been eyeing their own prediction market opportunities. A CFTC-regulated exchange could provide those companies with the potential to offer de facto betting on sports and a ton of other subjects in all 50 states, not just the ones that have legalized event wagering.
Polymarket, though, has been around long enough and gotten large enough that it should shake up a still-young status quo for prediction markets in the U.S. Coplan noted to CNBC that the company has gotten “pretty damn big” on its own with a “guerilla” style, compared to others pouring big money into marketing.
IMHO, B2B, things of that nature
Coplan also said he thinks there is a different type of user behavior that "the itch is scratched for" with his crypto-based prediction market that goes beyond sports betting or stock trading.
“And that's this idea that you have an opinion on things and you're curious about what's going to happen in the future, and you think, ‘I think you're wrong and I'm right,’” Coplan said. “So, I want to put up or shut up, right? And when we think about product, that's what we want to build, as opposed to some sort of hyper-financialized app.
“And I do think that there'll be maybe some cannibalization if these are powered [business-to-business], or … there's probably going to be more competition as the revenues heat up and the market’s larger, but we're really just focused on delivering on product,” Coplan said.
