Skip to content
Table of Contents

Crypto.com Announces Sports Event Trading Product

Pittsburgh Penguins v Los Angeles Kings
Table of Contents

Last week, Crypto.com, a cryptocurrency trading platform, debuted a new product in a starkly different industry that will allow customers to buy futures contracts on individual sporting events.

Sports Betting Futures

Much like the election betting futures that were offered by trading platforms like New York-based Kalshi, Crypto.com will focus its attention on the sports betting market. But instead of customers making a fixed-odds bet as is customary with a sportsbook, they will instead be asked to answer yes or no to a series of outcomes to a sports event.

Those taking a contract can only lose the amount that they have paid for it and nothing more. Funding an account can come from USD currency or one of over 350 tokens in the Crypto.com app and website, including BTC, ETH, and CRO.

  • Customers are allowed to hold a maximum of 2,500 open positions for each sports event contract at the same time.
  • Customers cannot trade contracts for the two teams involved during a match leading up to the event. When the match ends, trading for the team that is still eligible for the event will resume.
  • Contracts for teams that are ineligible for the event will expire early. For example, if the team is eliminated from the event.

“Sports Events Trading offers an entirely new platform for U.S. users to engage nationwide at Crypto.com and in the Crypto.com app,” Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said in a statement. “This unique financial product allows users to trade their prediction on the outcome of a sports event. It’s a fundamentally new concept for sports, and we’re thrilled to be the first regulated platform in the U.S. to offer it to our users.”

The nature of the way in which customers take contracts on sports events as opposed to betting them at a sportsbook allows the Singapore-based company to offer its new sports event trading product nationwide, as it is not restricted by state laws that govern sportsbooks. Sports betting contracts are legally interpreted as a commodity future, much like a contract would be taken on pork bellies or natural gas.

Robinhood Considering Sports Event Trading

Robinhood Markets, Inc. is another financial services company whose platform allows trades on stocks, options, and futures. According to its CEO, Vladimir Tenev, he may also be venturing in the same direction as Crypto.com and offering his company’s own sports event trading product.

In December, Tenev hinted as much at the company’s inaugural investor day event, “We’re keenly looking into that space. Nothing to announce just yet, but it’s so important to our customers and in culture that we’re excited about it.”

Room for Innovation

Robinhood boasts 24 million funded accounts, and Jeffrey Stantial, a managing director at Stifel Financials’ consumer and retail sector, stated there is enough room for exchanges like Robinhood and traditional online sportsbooks.

“Regardless, we see fairly limited direct market share risk to incumbent traditional vig-based online bookmakers given vastly different offerings & limited viable breadth of markets for the exchange model,” Stantial said. “A well-capitalized, liquid betting exchange could put pressure on traditional bookmaker overrounds, though also providing additional means to hedge outcomes exposure and a pricing signal to help refine odds (as exchanges can take on more sharp action).”

Follow BMR