Gambling industry entrepreneur, investor, advisor. GP at Acies Investments, Operating Advisor at Arctos Sports Partners, Partner Emeritus at Eilers & Krejcik.
Las Vegas
Joined December 2011
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Investors punishing @JasonDRobins for spending to expand into new products when his core products have hit a fairly sturdy TAM wall doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.
DraftKings CEO Jason Robins says the company will still make a return on its $1 billion of planned prediction market spend, but Wall Street appears to have doubts as the company’s shares plunged by as much as 29% Friday.
"Even if there is a ruling that shuts down sports predictions in July of 2028, we still think that cohort should pay back in four years or less, Robins said. "And that’s because of the excellent cross-sell we’re seeing onto other products we have, including the non-sports predictions."
Chris Grove retweeted
Significant escalation via the @CFTC, which has ordered prediction markets to stop geofencing states within 30 days, or explain why they can’t.
Puts Kalshi in precarious spot, on a collision course with court orders in Michigan, Nevada & Washington, where its sports contracts are currently banned.
Chris Grove retweeted
🧵 Now that the dust has settled, here are my 5 takeaways from the first prediction-market election!! cnn.com/2026/11/04/politics/…
Not sure how much Flutter will learn from this kind of trial, but it's still interesting to see them moving a bit faster on at least publicly acknowledging the potential impact rips will have (really, is having) than many of their peers.
SCOOP: FanDuel is running a trial for a digital rips product.
“We’ve been tracking the rips product very closely,” Dan Taylor, the CEO of FanDuel's parent company, Flutter, tells me. “We’ve done some trials already, and those trials have gone very well.”
The trial is limited to the FanDuel Rewards Club. Customers can select a reward that takes them to @ArenaClub, a digital rips company co-founded by Derek Jeter.
Engagement with the Arena Club reward is being used to assess customer interest in digital rips.
Taylor declined to offer more specifics on when FanDuel could launch a digital rips product of its own.
“There are lots of different products that fulfill the different customer needs for risk-taking,” Taylor says of digital rips. “And this is fulfilling that customer need in the U.S.”
I agree with @TheStalwart's assessment. But the very real problem for prediction markets is that elections and election-like events are few and far between. You need attention at massive scale AND uncertainty AND a long-but-not-too-long window where that uncertainty steadily resolves (plus some other ANDs).
But when it works, It Works.
My experience mirrored @matt_levine's: "by 8:30 [Kalshi traders] told me that there was a 98% chance that the Democrats would control the Senate, and I went to bed."
Chris Grove retweeted
I’m joining the All In Pod tonight at 8:30 for the Midterms. It’s streaming in the Polymarket app.
Last time I went on All In for an election I got raided a few days later. @FBIDirectorKash don’t get any ideas pls 🙏🙏
Chris Grove retweeted
Kalshi parlay takers have now lost more than $1 billion since the feature launched last year, after a huge surge in popularity this football season, an InGame analysis shows.
Since parlays first became available in September 2025, Kalshi’s total volume on multi-leg trades has been $165.6 billion. Taker stakes — the closest equivalent to sportsbook handle — are $7.1 billion, and takers have lost $1.004 billion.
Chris Grove retweeted
There's still litigation in Minnesota over its attempted prediction market ban. The state wants discovery from Kalshi & Polymarket about all trades 2024-2026, "how and when (they) operate like 'the house,'" internal docs about ads where they used the phrase "betting," and more.
Chris Grove retweeted
We obviously haven’t had the major jobs wipeout yet. But you read stuff like this. And you read what economics students themselves are saying about working with AI (ht @odavis_h) and it’s hard not to feel like the seismic shift is on its way.
Chris Grove retweeted
SCOOP: Before launching its digital rips product, PrizePicks sent a briefing to every state attorney general and met with gambling regulators to share what they were planning.
It was a proactive move to assuage concerns that digital rips could be considered gambling, and may have helped lay the groundwork for broader gambling industry adoption of digital rips.
While digital rips seem to meet the standard definition of gambling—the customer pays for a random chance to win a prize of monetary value—PrizePicks' view is that they are simply digitizing the age-old practice of opening a pack of physical trading cards, which isn't considered gambling under the law.
“This is much more like an e-commerce transaction than it is a form of gambling,” PrizePicks chief legal officer Jason Barclay tells me.
Still, Barclay says “we recognize that anything in the sports entertainment space can be subject to abuse, can be subject to addiction.”
About half of Wednesday’s press release announcing PrizePicks Packs is dedicated to consumer protection measures that come with the product: Customers need to be 18 years old and the app has built in deposit limits. Users have the option to cut themselves off, a casino-industry practice known as self-exclusion.
Gambling or not, the trading card market has certainly become speculative.
An index of trading card values tracked by Card Ladder is outpacing the S&P 500. Trading card manufacturers promote buying card packs in search of rare cards as if they were jackpot lottery tickets.
Trying to win a rare trading card by spending $2,500 on a fantasy-sports app might seem strange to some. But as an @EilersKrejcik report points out, “A generation raised on Pokémon, skins and digital goods already assigns real value to noncash assets. A $1,000 card can be a grail, a status object and an asset at once; for the right consumer, the chance to acquire it can be more compelling than an equivalent cash payout.”
(video via @AldrinResearch)
Chris Grove retweeted
NEW: All NBA players and team personnel will be required to attend an in-person training session on the league's sports betting rules, according to a memo the NBA sent to team leadership on Friday.
barrons.com/articles/draftki…
Chris Grove retweeted
Interesting. @AaronDFordNV for Governor sent an email pitch citing how prediction markets are ranking the race.
- Prediction markets are illegal in Nevada
- The AG's office is representing the @NevadaGCB in the lawsuits banning companies such as @Kalshi
Awkward.
@TheNVIndy
Chris Grove retweeted
BetMGM Sportsbook is available in 25 jurisdictions, whereas BetMGM Casino operates in only 4. But as CEO Adam Greenblatt indicated on the company's Q3 earnings call, quality > quantity when it comes to customers — and iGaming is where the quality (in other words, the money) is.
Chris Grove retweeted
Today marks the 4th anniversary of the current bull market, with the S&P 500 up 118% during that time. Here is how stocks stack up against men's U.S. sports league average gains, via @Sportico.
🏒 NHL: 141%
🏈 NFL: 126%
🏀 NBA: 121%
📈 S&P: 118%
⚾️ MLB: 37%
⚽️ MLS: 31%
Chris Grove retweeted
The Ohio Casino Control Commission (OCCC) sent out 10 cease-and-desist letters Friday to prediction markets offering sports event contracts in the state.
Polymarket, Robinhood, and Underdog are among recipients after Sixth Circuit ruled that sports event contracts fall under state gambling law.
Chris Grove retweeted
NEW: The biggest trading firm is so secretive it has no CEO or board of directors. Jane Street’s dominance means its leaders matter across the world, so we spent months trying to figure out who’s who. Here’s a gift link. Please read and share it
bloomberg.com/features/2026-…
Chris Grove retweeted
A dispatch from myself and @butlerbetstrade from G2E, which might be the biggest prediction market conference yet. It's just a prediction market conference that doesn't like them all that much:
covers.com/industry/g2e-all-…
@Covers
Chris Grove retweeted
NEW: How insiders view Robinhood's prediction market deal with Crypto(.)com, OG and OG's exchange subsidiary—from the motivations to what it means for the industry.
Insights from Robinhood, Crypto(.)com, Rothera, Susquehanna and more.
sportico.com/business/sports…
Chris Grove retweeted
JUST IN: Instead of appealing to SCOTUS, @Kalshi has asked the full Ninth Circuit to review ("en banc") its case against Nevada. This comes after Kalshi lost with the appeals panel, which ruled 3-0 that Nevada can regulate the prediction site like gambling.
Chris Grove retweeted
Exclusive: Robinhood Markets agreed to add Crypto.com’s yes-or-no contracts to its trading platform and take minority stakes in the digital-currency exchange and its prediction-markets business on.wsj.com/4yqlNEv
