Polymarket CEO: Regulated Sportsbooks 'Scam" Their Customers
As Polymarket prepares to enter the lucrative US prediction market, that company's CEO called state-licensed sports betting platforms “a scam” and accused them of ripping off bettors.
“If you look at all four of those products, they’re all identical,” Polymarket Shayne Coplan told Axios business editor Dan Primack at the Axios BFD Summit in New York City on Tuesday. “None of them innovate. They all rip off the consumer, respectfully. You can only trade against the house. They can ban you if you make money and they can profile you as a user and change the prices based on you. That’s a scam. In traditional finance, that’s like a bucket shop. It’s a scam. Those are illegal.”
He also called the current state-regulated system a duopoly, and he's pretty right about that when it comes to the vast majority of US states that currently regulate sports gambling.
FanDuel and DraftKings together control together control roughly 65 to 72% of the regulated U.S. online sports-betting market.
For the 2024 fiscal year, it was estimated that FanDuel alone had ~41% of gross revenue and DraftKings ~33%.
“There’s this patchwork state-based solution where every single state is like some sort of weird backdoor lobbying of the tribes get this and the tax is this rate, and everything is like this hodgepodge solution,” Coplan added. “And as a result, it’s so goddamn complicated and expensive that no new entrants can enter the market.”
Polymarket is preparing to join Kalshi in the U.S. market under Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulation.
Suggesting the regulated sports betting system is shady and corrupt and the end product is a scam is certainly...a choice. https://t.co/LNpaX0G6GV
— Jessica Welman (@jesswelman) November 19, 2025
Kalshi has been embroiled in legal suits with a handful of states, most notably Nevada.
US District Court of Nevada Judge Andrew Gordon said last Friday he is leaning toward dissolving an injunction involving Kalshi.
The judge questioned whether some of Kalshi’s sports-related contracts meet the legal standards for derivatives, noting, “It seems like your definition is so broad that pretty much anything can become a swap — anything can have a financial consequence.”
Victor Rocha, Conference Chair of the Indian Gaming Association. President of Victor-Strategies, vowed that California would be next to take action against the prediction market sector as well as Daily Fantasy Sports contest sites via his X page.
"We’re going after DFS+ next," Rocha tweeted. "I’m also hearing talk of PM legislation in California . Imagine what happens when the PMs are shutdown by the SCOTUS. What goes up must come down, right?"
Polymarket will work with PrizePicks to offer a prediction market platform while FanDuel and DraftKings are preparing to launch sports markets in states where regulated sports betting is currently not available through a partnership with CME Group and an acquisition of Railbird, respectively.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
