Meta Betting on Prediction Markets in Search of Next Growth Engine (Report)

Arena revives Meta’s previous attempt to predict markets after shutting down its Forecast app in 2022.

Meta is reportedly developing a market prediction app it calls Arena, which would allow users to bet on real outcomes with points rather than real money.

The app would be separate from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, the New York Times says, and Meta plans to grow it by channeling its existing social audience into the new product.

Arena App Details

In a June 23 exclusive, The New York Times, citing sources with knowledge of the project, said that while Arena was experimental, it was a top priority for Mark Zuckerberg. If it comes to fruition, it won’t require users to wager real money, at least initially, with a video game-style points system being the likely starting model. However, sources do not rule out the possibility of real money betting at a later stage.

The app is one of several standalone apps developed by Meta, with another called Meta Photos that uses AI to generate new types of media also in the works. This push toward standalone apps reflects a larger problem for the multinational tech company, as Facebook and Instagram have shifted heavily toward video, leaving fewer spaces within those platforms to test new product ideas, forcing Meta to look outward.

This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has dabbled in predictive markets. In 2020, his company launched Forecast, a crowdsourced prediction market app built around the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that used almost the same point-based structure. However, it closed in 2022.

Meta has also followed emerging social trends with varying results over the past few years, including copying features from Snapchat and TikTok with mixed results, as well as producing apps around podcasts, travel and matchmaking that went nowhere.

The timing looks different now, with prediction markets growing at a rate that’s hard to ignore, with Kalshi and Polymarket combined for $51 billion in transactions in 2025. That figure is even higher this year, having already reached $130 billion.

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Meanwhile, Kalshi completed a $1 billion funding round that valued it at $22 billion, while Polymarket was in talks in April for a $400 million raise at a $15 billion valuation, with Bernstein predicting that by 2030 the total forecast market volume could reach $1 trillion per year.

A crowded field

Meta is not the only company eyeing a share of the prediction market, with several crypto companies already having a head start. In March, Binance added a prediction market feature to its portfolio, while Hyperliquid launched macro prediction markets to its own offerings the following month. Additionally, Coinbase and Crypto.com also offer products in this category, and Trump Media has also announced plans for the same.

However, the industry has also drawn legal criticism, with federal prosecutors accusing a U.S. special forces soldier of using classified information to bet Polymarket on a secret plan to capture Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro, netting him $400,000.

Data quality and trading behavior on some platforms have also come under increased scrutiny, with blockchain investigator ZachXBT warning in June that Rain Protocol, a prediction market project valued at nearly $9 billion, was showing signs of on-chain price manipulation.