The company behind the New York Stock Exchange is thinking about putting more money into a betting market platform that has exploded in popularity.
Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns the NYSE, may join Polymarket's next funding round. CEO Jeff Sprecher said on Bloomberg Television Thursday that the firm would consider taking part if it helps the round succeed. His exact words: "We'll look at it, if it would help the round in order to have our imprimatur on it, we are always interested."
ICE is already a big investor.
Prediction markets let people make yes/no bets on everything from sports to elections to geopolitics. They have grown dramatically since the 2024 presidential election, when they became a popular way for people to wager on the outcome.
Sprecher said ICE's involvement is not a typical venture-capital play. "The reality is we're not a venture firm," he said. "We're really here to have this transfer of information and expertise."
The market seems to like what Polymarket is doing.
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Other players are getting involved too. Kalshi Inc. is attracting investor money, and Robinhood Markets Inc. has been building out its own prediction-market business.
With all this growth comes a question: who regulates these markets? Right now, federal agencies like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have oversight. But some states want to handle sports- and election-related contracts themselves instead of leaving that to Washington.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev thinks the CFTC should stay in charge. But he also said the industry would survive even if states win the argument and it goes all the way to the US Supreme Court. "I don't think it's going to be, 'prediction markets are gone,'" he said. "There's going to be some line drawn, and then we'll obviously have to adapt for that."
It is worth watching how this plays out. A Supreme Court ruling or a shift in regulatory power could change the rules for every platform in the space.
There is one corner of the betting world that ICE is steering clear of: perpetual futures. These are leveraged contracts for betting on crypto prices with no expiration date, and they have long been confined to the crypto world. They got attention during the Iran war as a rare way to trade oil when conventional futures venues, including CME Group Inc. and ICE itself, were closed.
Sprecher is not tempted. "Our client base is really a hedging client base, and there's no forward pricing curve that is created by a perpetual future," he said. He called them speculative and said they "don't cater to our distribution or client base."
President Donald Trump said earlier this week that US regulators are working to get Hyperliquid, a crypto exchange that specializes in perpetual futures, operating in the United States. But ICE is apparently content to watch from the sidelines on that one.
The bottom line: For everyday investors, the takeaway is simple. Money is flowing into prediction markets at record levels, and big financial names want a piece of the action. That trend is likely to continue even as regulators figure out the rules.
The platforms may change how they operate, but the appetite for betting on world events is not going anywhere. Your portfolio could feel the ripple effects as these companies grow, reshape, and adapt to whatever regulations come next.
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