Polymarket Says Revenue Run Rate Tops $1.8bn

Polymarket says its annualized revenue has passed $1.8 billion, the prediction market told CNBC on Tuesday, November 10. That’s up from June, when the company put its revenue run rate “north of $1 billion” shortly after it opened its domestic exchange in May.

A run rate takes the current pace of revenue and stretches it over a full year, so it’s a snapshot rather than a year of booked sales. It’s also the company’s own number. Most of the growth is coming from Polymarket US, the federally regulated exchange, which runs as a separate venue from the crypto prediction market that made the brand famous.

Football Did the Heavy Lifting

The US exchange handled more than $14.5 billion in notional volume in October, up from $4 billion in June, according to TickerTracker data cited by CNBC. Notional volume is the face value of the contracts that changed hands, not what Polymarket keeps. CNBC put the climb down to the FIFA World Cup over the summer and the start of the NFL season in September.

Combo contracts did a lot of the work. They play much like the multi-leg parlays at online sportsbooks, and they made up more than 70% of the volume traded on the platform on Sunday, November 8, CNBC reported.

Where the Money Comes From

Polymarket’s revenue is trading fees. On the US exchange, the taker, meaning the trader whose order fills against one already waiting on the book, pays a fee worked out as a coefficient times the number of contracts times the price times one minus the price. That formula peaks on a coin-flip contract priced at 50 cents. At the top volume tier, buying 100 of those costs $1.74 in fees under Polymarket’s own schedule, and accounts with less than $10,000 of taker volume over the past 30 days pay a higher coefficient, 0.095 against 0.0695.

Combos Get Pricier From Today

The product driving the growth is also getting more expensive. From 1:00 PM ET on Wednesday, November 11, combo takers pay an extra charge built on a fixed 0.06 coefficient, the fee schedule shows. From 12:00 AM ET on November 14, traders who post resting combo orders pay a maker fee of their own at a 0.03 coefficient. Until then, combo makers paid nothing.

Two Polymarkets Under One Name

The international platform is the original Polymarket, and it’s the crypto one. The CFTC described it as running its markets through smart contracts on a blockchain, and that chain is Polygon. Traders there have put up USDC, a dollar stablecoin, and in April Polymarket said it would settle positions in Polymarket USD, its own token backed 1:1 by USDC held in reserve, Finance Magnates reported.

US residents aren’t supposed to touch that platform. Polymarket US is the version built for them, regulated by the CFTC, and it’s the one state regulators are now chasing. New York’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Polymarket US, and the exchange has agreed to stop selling sports contracts in Michigan.

A $21bn Price Tag and a Federal Probe

The revenue figure lands during a fresh $1 billion funding round that values Polymarket at $21 billion. Donald Trump Jr.’s venture firm, 1789 Capital, is leading it with about $300 million, 1789 spokesperson Alexa Henning told The New York Times in September. Polymarket was valued at about $15 billion before the round, and 1789 had already put in about $200 million. Trump Jr. is also an adviser to the company.

The CFTC is running a broad investigation into Polymarket, CNBC reported, covering its advertising and whether it broke an earlier settlement with the agency by letting US residents onto its international exchange. That settlement goes back to January 2022, when the CFTC ordered Polymarket to pay a $1.4 million civil penalty for offering unregistered event-based binary options and to wind down markets that did not comply with the Commodity Exchange Act.

Congress Is the Next Audience

The New York Times reported that the new inquiry began earlier this year, and Polymarket could face more questions from a Democratic Congress, partly over the Trump Jr. connection. Polymarket has told CNBC it will work with lawmakers as they get to know the industry, while the question of how US gambling law treats prediction markets is still being fought out in court. “We welcome scrutiny,” a Polymarket spokesperson told CNBC.