Prediction market odds have become a staple of mainstream news, routinely quoted on cable television, in wire copy and in equity research notes. The platforms behind those numbers let traders buy and sell contracts tied to real-world outcomes—elections, economic releases, sports—with prices that double as probability estimates. Yet according to Pierre Lindh, co-founder and managing director of NEXT.io, the audience for that coverage has never been properly served. "Nobody was serving it with real journalistic standards," he said.

That gap is the premise behind NEXTPredict, the first global B2B conference dedicated to the prediction market sector, running October 22–23 at Convene, Hudson Yards in New York. Rather than placing journalists in a press room behind the event, organizers have put working reporters on the program itself. CNBC correspondent Contessa Brewer and CNN senior reporter Marshall Cohen were added to the lineup in August, with their sessions booked around the U.S. midterms.

Organizers expect more than 50 speakers and 2,500 attendees, "bringing the category to broader audiences," in Lindh's words Speaking to PredictCentr in August, he argued that prediction market stories are serious news that ordinary readers actively want, reaching an audience far larger than the iGaming trade—the online gambling industry—he came from.

The summit program was built on the same logic. A "healthy part" of the main stage had to carry content that national broadcasters would send a crew to cover, he said, because "B2B panel content does not move a national desk." The media plan has since grown from 50 passes to between 100 and 200.

Lindh acknowledged a tension at play: the midterms dominate prediction market headlines, while the conference agenda centers on market structure—the rules, venues and oversight that govern how the contracts trade. "The story that gets the summit on air is not the story delegates are paying to be in the room for, and both have to be true at the same time," he said. The timing keeps both in play: the summit closes on October 23, with midterm voting set for early November.

The numbers behind the noise

For all the mainstream distribution, there is a gap between media presence and the actual user base of prediction market platforms. Polymarket's monthly active users stood at roughly 283,300, according to Token Terminal, which measures unique addresses making a revenue-generating transaction—down from a peak above 750,000 in the spring. Acquisition spikes around major events have not translated into sustained participation at the levels those spikes suggest.

Kalshi, meanwhile, said it added 3 million new users over the 2026 World Cup, with more than $1.2 billion traded on the tournament winner contract, a record for a single market. Volume on days without matches ran well below match days. "Our volumes are where the news is at," chief executive Tarek Mansour told CNBC in July.

The retail money that does arrive is largely rotating in from crypto rather than coming to speculation for the first time. A Langston Co. survey projects the share of crypto traders using prediction markets rising from 22% to 27%, with the appeal being short-term upside rather than conviction, Langston partner Tom Anderson told the Wall Street Journal.

Institutional attention is building alongside the retail flows. "Everyone will start referencing the data, and then people will start trading the data," Bank of America analyst Julie Hoover told CNBC this month, in an article tracking the increasing professionalization of the space. That depends on the data proving its worth: Federal Reserve researchers found that Kalshi's macroeconomic contracts matched conventional forecasting benchmarks and beat the Bloomberg consensus on headline CPI.

Winning, however, is getting harder. A working paper covering $13.76 billion of Polymarket trades found that 3% of accounts captured roughly 27% of dollar profits—a share Yale economist Theis Jensen expects to fall below 1% as institutions compete away the mispricing.

What's on the agenda

Two serving directors from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the U.S. agency that regulates derivatives and event contracts, are confirmed for NEXTPredict: David Miller, from enforcement, and Duncan Hennes, from market participants. They join DraftKings chief executive Jason Robins, Robinhood's JB Mackenzie, and executives from Kalshi, Novig, Cboe, Myriad (owned by Decrypt's parent company, Dastan) and Blackstone.

Insider trading gets a session of its own, chaired by Matthew Kulkin of law firm WilmerHale. Lindh called it the industry's most exposed point: "This is going to be the sticking point and the most difficult point to resolve."

The organizers have also hedged the conference itself, buying $3 million of cover on Kalshi's flight cancellation market for a $12,000 premium, with trading firm Susquehanna acting as market maker. If more than half of arrivals into JFK are canceled on October 21, the trade pays for the event.