Zuckerberg bets on Meta entering prediction markets with a new app to challenge Polymarket, Kalshi: Report
According to the New York Times, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally led a team at the company to develop a standalone prediction markets application called Arena.
What is Meta’s Arena App and How Will It Work?
Zuckerberg recently sent a small in-house team to create a smartphone app based on prediction market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi, the New York Times reported, citing two employees with knowledge of the matter.
According to one of the sources cited by NYT, Arena would initially operate with a video game-style points system, unlike Polymarket and Kalshi, where users bet with real money. The person added that the use of real money betting was not ruled out at a later stage.
The app will work independently of Meta’s existing social networking platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Zuckerberg Sees Prediction Markets as the Next Big Social Behavior Shift
NYT described the Arena project as experimental but dismissed as a priority by insiders. This forms part of a broader strategy by Zuckerberg to build new apps around social behaviors emerging online.
Meta’s existing platforms collectively attract more than 3.56 billion daily visitors; This figure raised questions within the company about whether the company’s core practices had reached saturation point. This concern has pushed Meta executives to look beyond Facebook and Instagram for growth.
Arena is one of several new standalone apps that Meta is currently developing. Another, called Meta Photos, is also in the works and will use artificial intelligence to create new forms of media, the NYT reported.
The $130 Billion Market Everyone Wants to Buy a Part of
Prediction markets have evolved from a niche internet curiosity to a mainstream cultural phenomenon. Polymarket and Kalshi together recorded combined business of approximately $50 billion in 2025. According to NYT, this figure has already exceeded $130 billion in 2026.
Its commercial appeal is simple: Prediction market operators charge a fee on each transaction, making the model a potentially significant source of revenue. The industry has attracted the attention of traditional gambling platforms such as FanDuel and DraftKings, cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, and Trump Media and Technology Group, which has announced plans for its own prediction market.
Meta I Tried This Before and Turned It Off
This isn’t Zuckerberg’s first attempt in this area. In 2020, Meta launched Forecast, a crowdsourced prediction marketplace application built on publicly available estimates of the initial course of the Covid-19 pandemic. The app used a points-based system and was positioned as a knowledge sharing tool. Meta shuts it down in 2022 before it gains any meaningful traction.
Meta has a broader history of difficulties with standalone apps. a dedicated internal unit called New Product Experimentation, launched in 2019; It has produced podcasts, apps focused on travel, music and matchmaking. Few found an audience, according to three people familiar with the projects cited by the NYT.
Regulatory Scrutiny Shadows Prediction Market Industry
The rapid growth of prediction markets has not gone unnoticed by regulators and law enforcement. The industry’s ability to offer odds on almost any outcome has created new avenues for potential insider trading.
Polymarket in particular has attracted serious legal attention. In April, federal prosecutors in New York City charged a member of the U.S. Special Forces with using classified information to bet on a secret plot to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. According to prosecutors cited by NYT, the soldier reportedly earned more than $400,000 from the operation.
The resulting scrutiny landed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency responsible for overseeing prediction markets. The agency, already small by Washington standards, has shrunk even further under the Trump administration, leaving it with its smallest staff in recent years at a time when oversight responsibilities have increased sharply.
Will Arena Really Start?
Meta insiders warned the NYT that Arena was in active development and may not be released to the public as a result.
But for Zuckerberg, the logic driving this effort is consistent with how he’s long approached product development: Identify where user behavior is changing, move quickly, and scale with Meta’s existing audience base.
This article is based on an exclusive report by The New York Times.
