Zuckerberg Bets on Points, Not Pennies: Meta's Arena App Takes Aim at Polymarket 🏟️

Meta is developing a prediction market-style mobile application called Arena that would allow users to forecast outcomes across politics, sports, entertainment and world affairs using a video game-like points system rather than cash, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the New York Times. The project has been described as experimental but a top priority inside the company, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally directing staff to build the app. Meta has not ruled out eventually allowing real-money betting on the platform. Arena would operate independently of Meta's existing applications, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, with the company planning to leverage its social networking audience to drive adoption. Meta reported 3.56 billion daily users across its apps as of March.

The Arena initiative revives Meta's earlier prediction product Forecast, which launched in 2020 during the early Covid-19 pandemic and was taken down in 2022. It also comes as prediction markets have surged in mainstream visibility following Polymarket's breakout trading volumes during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Crypto-native firms including Coinbase ($COIN) and Kraken have explored event-contract offerings, while retail brokerage Robinhood ($HOOD) and trading giant Intercontinental Exchange have introduced or backed similar products. Gambling operator DraftKings has also moved into the space.

The growth of event contracts has drawn increasing regulatory scrutiny in the U.S., with critics arguing that bets tied to elections, geopolitics and other real-world outcomes may function as gambling. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) remains engaged in legal disputes with state authorities over the sector's oversight. Lawmakers have raised insider-trading concerns, including a recent proposal that would prohibit profiting from nonpublic information on prediction markets though it notably excluded White House officials from its scope. One case that drew attention involved Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a soldier alleged to have made more than $400,000 on a Polymarket event contract related to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was removed by U.S. forces in January and faces a criminal trial in New York City. Van Dyke is scheduled for trial in December.

Arena is not Meta's first foray into crypto-adjacent territory. In 2019, the company unveiled the Libra stablecoin and a digital wallet called Calibra, drawing pushback on Capitol Hill before the project was rebranded as Diem, dropped in 2022 and its assets later sold to the collapsed Silvergate Bank. Meta has reportedly spent $80 billion on Zuckerberg's metaverse vision and earlier this year said it would stop creating new virtual reality experiences for Horizon Worlds. Instagram's NFT support was also scrapped roughly a year after launch. In April, Meta began allowing certain Facebook creators in Colombia and the Philippines to receive earnings payouts in USDC stablecoin directly to their crypto wallets across multiple networks, with U.S. lawmakers raising concerns over any domestic stablecoin plans. The company also reportedly moved in April to cut about 10% of its staff, roughly 8,000 positions, as it pivoted toward artificial intelligence.