NEXTPredict Founder: ‘Nobody Was Serving’ Prediction Markets’ Enormous Audience

Prediction markets have exploded into the mainstream media, with odds now regularly quoted on cable news, in wire copy and in equity research notes.

That’s why NEXTPredict, which runs on October 22 and 23 at Convene, Hudson Yards in New York, has put working reporters on the program rather than in a press room behind it. CNBC correspondent Contessa Brewer and CNN senior reporter Marshall Cohen were added in August, booked around the midterms. Organizers expect more than 50 speakers and 2,500 attendees, “bringing the category to broader audiences,” in the words of NEXT.io co-founder and managing director Pierre Lindh.

Prediction market stories are serious news that ordinary readers actually want, Lindh told PredictCentr in August, reaching an audience far larger than the iGaming trade he came from, and “nobody was serving it with real journalistic standards.”

The summit programme was built the same way. A “healthy part” of the main stage had to carry content national broadcasters would send a crew for, he said, because “B2B panel content does not move a national desk.” The media plan has since grown from 50 passes to between 100 and 200. 

With the midterms dominating the headlines around prediction markets while the agenda’s focus is on market structure, he concedes that there’s a dichotomy at play, noting that, “the story that gets the summit on air is not the story delegates are paying to be in the room for, and both have to be true at the same time.”

The numbers behind the noise

While the category has mainstream distribution, there’s a gap between media presence and the actual user base of prediction market platforms.

Polymarket’s monthly active users sit around 283,300, measured by Token Terminal as unique addresses making a revenue-generating transaction, down from a peak above 750,000 in the spring. Acquisition spikes around events—but participation does not hold at the level the spikes suggest.

Kalshi said it took on 3 million new users over the 2026 World Cup, with more than $1.2 billion traded on the tournament winner contract, a record for a single market. Volume on days without matches ran well below match days. “Our volumes are where the news is at,” chief executive Tarek Mansour told CNBC in July.

What retail money does arrive is largely rotating in from crypto rather than new to speculation, with a Langston Co. survey projecting the share of crypto traders using prediction markets rising from 22% to 27%. The appeal is short-term upside rather than conviction, Langston partner Tom Anderson told the Wall Street Journal.

“Everyone will start referencing the data, and then people will start trading the data,” Bank of America analyst Julie Hoover told CNBC this month, in an article tracking the increasing professionalization of the space. That depends on the data proving its worth, with Federal Reserve researchers finding that Kalshi’s macroeconomic contracts matched conventional forecasting benchmarks and beat the Bloomberg consensus on headline CPI.

Winning is getting harder. A working paper covering $13.76 billion of Polymarket trades found 3% of accounts took roughly 27% of dollar profits, a share Yale economist Theis Jensen expects to fall below 1% as institutions compete away the mispricing.

What’s on the agenda

Two serving CFTC directors are confirmed for NEXTPredict, David Miller from enforcement and Duncan Hennes from market participants, alongside DraftKings chief executive Jason Robins, Robinhood’s JB Mackenzie and executives from Kalshi, Novig, Cboe, Myriad (owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan) and Blackstone. Insider trading gets a session of its own, chaired by WilmerHale’s Matthew Kulkin. Lindh calls it the industry’s most exposed point: “This is going to be the sticking point and the most difficult point to resolve.”

The organizers have also hedged the conference itself, buying $3 million of cover on Kalshi’s flight cancellation market for a $12,000 premium, with Susquehanna as market maker. If more than half of arrivals into JFK are canceled on October 21, the trade pays for the event.