Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put a small team to work creating a standalone prediction market app called Arena. The app will let users predict outcomes of real-world events like sports games and political contests, the company confirmed yesterday [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
Arena will initially operate without real-money wagering. Instead, users will play with a video game-like points system. Meta has not ruled out adding real-money betting later, sources say [1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 5]. Jonathan D. Cohen, historian and author, noted Meta’s move shows "we are still in the early days of the prediction market experiment" [12].
Arena will function independently from Meta’s major social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. However, Meta hopes to leverage its large existing user base of 3.56 billion daily active users to grow Arena’s reach [1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 5]. Mark Zuckerberg said Meta "aims to create new types of apps based on emerging social behaviour online" [4].
Prediction markets recently surged in popularity after the 2024 US election and are forecast to reach $1 trillion in annual trading volume by the decade’s end. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi allow real-money bets but have faced increased regulatory scrutiny in the US [2, 7, 9, 11, 5]. Meta previously launched a similar app called Forecast in 2020 that used points but shut it down in 2022 [9, 10, 11].
Meta is working on other standalone apps as well, including Meta Photos, focused on AI-generated media [2, 4, 8, 9, 5]. Arena aims to tap into the growth of prediction markets that saw $50 billion in 2025 and $130 billion in trading volume in 2026 to date across major platforms [9, 11].
The new app’s launch signals Meta’s ongoing push to diversify beyond its core social networks. Meta has not announced a specific launch date for Arena, but the reports emerged on June 23. Further details on timing and features are expected in the coming months [1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 10, 11, 5].
