That’s a daily record high, CEO Tarek Mansour said in an interview with CNBC Tuesday (Feb. 11). The company, which lets users purchase event contracts for the outcomes of things like sporting and pop culture events, elections and financial markets, said that volume was up 2,700% year over year
“It was an incredible weekend,” Mansour told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Kalshi was the biggest brand of the Super Bowl this year, without running a Super Bowl ad, and the way we achieved that is the product.”
The bets were not just about the game, he added, but on halftime entertainment. Trading volume for Bad Bunny’s choice of opening song topped $100 million, with more than $45 million focused on who would perform with the pop star.
However, Kalshi’s Super Bowl contracts still saw some hiccups, CNBC noted. Co-founder Luana Lopes Lara posted on social media during the game that some customers’ deposits were delayed because of high traffic.
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“Your money is safe and on the way, it will just take longer to land,” she wrote.
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As PYMNTS wrote last week, Kalshi’s absence in the line-up of Super Bowl commercials was not by choice. The NFL has banned companies in its industry from purchasing ads, a “symbolic reminder that mainstream legitimacy remains elusive.”
“More consequentially, the regulatory environment surrounding prediction markets remains unsettled,” that report added. “As interest peaks, the industry is threading a narrow needle between federal oversight and an increasingly assertive patchwork of state regulators, each with its own interpretation of what these markets are, and what they are not.”
Last week saw the news that Kalshi’s mobile app was downloaded more times in January than sports-betting apps DraftKings Sportsbook or FanDuel Sportsbook have been downloaded in any month.
The Kalshi app was downloaded upwards of 3 million times in the United States in January, according to a blog post from Apptopia, which monitors app usage trends.
“Kalshi is legal in all 50 states even though users are allowed to bet on the outcome of sports games, props and stats,” wrote Adam Blacker, director of public relations at Apptopia. “As expected, it’s more popular in states where mobile app sports betting is illegal, but not by much.”
“Truly, there is close to no difference,” he added. “This means people are choosing to use Kalshi because they like it, not just because they cannot get their sports betting fix where they live.”
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