Roma

About Roma

The investment banking and capital markets firm Jefferies said in a September report that sports had become prediction markets’ “most important liquidity driver”, with combo and parlay-style contracts accounting for an increasing share of activity. But the analysts cautioned that prediction markets are scale businesses with relatively low revenue yields, leaving their economics dependent on sustained liquidity, engagement and trading activity.

James Monk, founder of sports data and streaming provider Catalist Sports, has witnessed that dependence directly. Catalist supplies ITF tennis data to Kalshi and Polymarket and has an exclusive US sports-streaming agreement with Kalshi.

The company must also provide data to the firms making markets on those events.

What is Roma?

The company has also pursued partnerships outside the normal financial media. Its deals include relationships with major sports organizations and entertainment properties, signaling efforts to integrate prediction markets into mainstream content and information services. 

The conclusion of the Yahoo Finance deal comes as there is more talk about the use of prediction market data in journalism. Operators such as Polymarket and rival Kalshi have touted their markets as a way to get real-time information on how likely future events are to occur. 

However, some media industry observers have questioned whether trading activity can reliably stand in for broader public opinion. There are also concerns among critics over the growing links between news organizations and prediction platforms. 

How to play Roma

The pure-play prediction market-operators, Polymarket and Kalshi, emerged from Week 1 as the clear winners. On one hand, Kalshi’s market share lead narrowed over its competitors, falling to 82% for the week ended 13 September, down from 86% a week earlier.

Still, Kalshi had a nine-fold lead over Polymarket, its next closest rival. Polymarket, meanwhile, led the group with 762,000 app downloads, edging Kalshi, DraftKings and FanDuel in the category. The downloads represented a 13,509% weekly increase and 25% of total category downloads, Polymarket wrote in a statement.

Across the market, operators delivered high double-digit gains compared with Labor Day weekend, which featured a full slate of college football games but no NFL contests. Two operators, DraftKings and Underdog each saw triple-digit growth, delivering weekly increases of 125% and 119%, respectively. Three others, Polymarket, Crypto.com and Novig, saw gains of at least 30%, led by Polymarket with a weekly increase of 46%.