Uptober
Polymarket completes monster raise that values biz at $8bn
Intercontinental Exchange punts $2bn on prediction markets provider.
In +More: Aristocrat buys Awager, Mixi reps join the PointsBet board.
Puts+Takes: DraftKings short-seller note, Earnings Preview: Evolution.
Venture playground: Sharp Alpha launches $150m UA fund.
Hard Rock Bet is growing – we know you know! And we want to bring in some more maestros to make beautiful music in our Sportsbook. You need to be among the very best in the industry to be considered for these roles. Are you up to it?
To the moon
From Wall Street to Main Street: Polymarket stole the headlines yesterday as it announced a $2bn all-cash investment from the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, positioning the move as an injection of prediction markets into the financial mainstream.
Horn aplenty: The new investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) comes at a pre-investment valuation of $8bn.
Polymarket’s US entry – due any day now – will now come with financial heft behind it.
All rise: Rumors had been doing the rounds in the past week that the formerly offshore Polymarket – whose major backer to date had been Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund – was on the verge of announcing a new fundraise.
The move comes three months after its last raise of $200m valued the business at $1bn.
Rival Kalshi has also been rumored to be raising cash, with suggestions that it will be valued at $5bn.
Plugged in: As part of the deal, ICE will also now become a global distributor of Polymarket’s event-driven data, which it said would provide its customers with sentiment indicators on topics of market relevance.
Additionally, ICE and Polymarket have agreed to partner on future “tokenization initiatives.”
Mainstream USA: An effusive Shayne Coplan, Polymarket founder and CEO, said the partnership with ICE brought prediction markets “into the financial mainstream.”
“By combining ICE’s institutional scale and credibility with Polymarket’s consumer savvy, we will be able to deliver world-class products for the modern investor,” he added.
Further, the realization of the potential of new technologies such as tokenization will “require collaboration between established market leaders and next-generation innovators.”
DeFi-ant: Similarly hitting the hyperbole button was Jeffrey Sprecher, ICE chair and CEO, who said Polymarket was “pioneering change within the decentralized finance space.”
He said Coplan and his team have created a “user-driven company relentlessly focused on product, building usage and distribution.”
“There are opportunities across markets that ICE together with Polymarket can uniquely serve, and we are excited about where this investment can take us.”
Diary date: ICE said it will be speaking about its investment in Polymarket on its earnings call scheduled for October 30.
Here we come: Polymarket is yet to officially launch in the US, having been operating offshore since 2022, but its purchase of derivatives exchange QCX earlier this year paved the way.
It rose to prominence alongside Kalshi at the time of the US presidential election last year.
It filed self-certifying sports events contracts and election markets last week with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard: Recall, FanDuel announced a “groundbreaking alliance” with CME, the largest US derivatives exchange, in late August, which promised the launch of event contracts on a number of financial markets in the near future.
Meanwhile, Crypto.com has teamed up with Underdog to launch sports prediction markets within the latter’s app.
Robinhood is also in the predictions game via a partnership with Kalshi.
Everything connected: “It seems like every company in the trading world is melding into some prediction market/sports-betting/crypto conglomerate. All the lines between speculation and hedging or gambling and investing are going away,” commented Bloomberg’s Odd Lots.
Taking it very badly: The prediction ascendancy continued to hurt the share prices of the leading OSB operators, with both DraftKings and Flutter dropping 6% and 4% respectively yesterday following their double-digit declines last week.
Flutter has lost $10bn of market cap value within the past 10 days and is now worth ~$41bn.
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+More
Aristocrat has bought Israel-based live slot streaming provider Awager from owners Oaktree Capital Management for an undisclosed sum. The transaction is expected to close in the coming months.
PointsBet has restructured its board following Mixi’s takeover, appointing three Mixi executives – Sho Okuyama, Kanji Kobayashi and Taishi Oba – as NEDs. The reshuffle comes after Mixi secured a 66.4% voting stake, although rival investor Betr still holds 27.7%. Brett Patton remains chair and CEO Sam Swannell stays on the board.
Rush Street Interactive has struck a deal with cryptocurrency payment solution provider BurraPay, the latter’s first US customer. The rollout will proceed jurisdiction by jurisdiction, subject to regulatory approval, across RSI’s North American operations.
Yolo subsidiaries Hub88 and Live88 have been granted gaming-related vendor licenses from the United Arab Emirates’ General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority. Live88 will be the first online live casino studio to be licensed in the UAE.
Puts+Takes
The big short: Short-seller Spruce Point has issued a “strong sell” call on DraftKings, arguing the emergence of federally regulated prediction markets represents a fundamental threat to the operator’s US sportsbook business.
The activist fund contends the market is underestimating the disruptive potential of prediction exchanges such as Kalshi and Polymarket.
Spruce argued investors and analysts have misunderstood how to interpret prediction markets handle, suggesting it is not as inflated as others have posited.
See today’s edition of Puts+Takes, which will be sent later this morning (PRO subscribers only).
Robins bites back: At G2E yesterday, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said: “I just don’t see a world where in a state that has both [prediction markets and sports betting] it’s not clear to the customer that the sportsbook is just a vastly stronger experience. I’m not trying to be dismissive but I don’t really see that. I don’t.”
Earnings preview – Evolution
Every picture tells a story: Evolution’s message has remained consistent in 2025: short-term friction from ring-fencing and anti-piracy work is being offset by studio expansion and a bulging launch slate. H2 is still expected to be “stronger,” with full-year EBITDA margins intact at 66-68%.
See yesterday’s Earnings Preview edition (PRO subscribers only).
Upcoming Earnings Previews:
Oct 9: Las Vegas Sands
Oct 10: BetMGM
Oct 14: Churchill Downs, Boyd Gaming
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Venture playground
Sharp Alpha UA fund
Ready for anything: Sharp Alpha has announced today the closing of a new user acquisition fund that will deploy over $150m over the course of the next 24 months.
The Sharp Alpha UA Fund invests non-dilutive capital into growth-stage companies to accelerate customer acquisition.
The UA Fund targets investments between $4m and $30m, with interest in larger facilities once a relationship has been established.
Prime day: Sharp Alpha’s managing partner Lloyd Danzig said the online gaming and interactive entertainment businesses are prime candidates for this type of financing.
“Unlike traditional equity or venture debt, cohort-based financing aligns capital deployment directly with customer acquisition outcomes,” he said.
“This structure preserves ownership, avoids restrictive covenants and scales with company growth”
Fair wind: In addition to non-dilutive financing, Sharp Alpha provides portfolio companies with a comprehensive suite of strategic resources and opportunities, spanning software development, brand partnerships, regulatory consulting, proprietary benchmarking and product launch acceleration.
Danzig said he was “blown away” by the amount of demand from its existing LPs for this product.
“Investors seeking venture-like returns have largely been disappointed by actual distributions over the last five years,” he added.
The Sharp Alpha UA Fund considers a wide range of consumer-facing opportunities but concentrates predominantly on online gaming, prediction markets, sports media, ecommerce, health & wellness and interactive entertainment.
Existing Sharp Alpha equity investments from prior funds include Triumph Arcade, Courtyard.io, Poolhouse and Jackpot.com.
Funding rounds
SK Ventures has invested in StatRankings, according to a LinkedIn post from StatRankings founder Kevin Adams. SK’s “belief in what we’re building means a lot,” he said. Eric Norlin, partner at SK Ventures, said: “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that the data space in fantasy/betting/sports is still a huge green space that is ripe for innovation.”
Making a splash: Skill-based social sports gaming provider Splash Sports has announced a $14.5m Series B funding round led by Dream Ventures, and with the participation of Boston Seed Capital, Velvet Sea Ventures, Greenwave Ventures and Evolution Partners. Splash Sports has also secured investment from EP Golf Ventures, an investment partnership between the PGA of America and Elysian Park Ventures, the private investment arm affiliated with the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership group.
In focus – YOriginal Games
Who are you? YOriginal Games is a next-generation game studio, dedicated to creating fast, high-impact casino experiences. Its portfolio features titles such as Plinko, Crash, Dice, Limbo and CoinFlip, games built for speed, simplicity and maximum engagement.
A spokesperson said the company delivers content that “stands out in a competitive market.”
Collaborating with global aggregators and casino platforms, the studio positions itself as a “forward-thinking B2B partner bringing originality and momentum to online gaming.”
What’s the big idea? The whole premise is “incredibly fast branding, high-engagement games” with competitive percentage returns.
YOriginal Games “fills the gap for quick, brandable content that operators can scale fast, backed by a pipeline of unique concepts still to come.”
KPIs: Total combined GGR exceeds $3.5m and continues to grow; flagship titles such as Crash, Plinko and Limbo are showing strong upward trends; more than 700,000 unique players have already engaged with YOriginal Games content.
Funding backgrounder: No external funding has been received to date. All financing comes from private investments by the (apparently secretive) owners, experienced iGaming experts with a proven track record spanning many years in the industry.
Growth company news
Until someone hits you in the face: Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is joining BoltBetz as both a strategic investor and promotional partner to support the company’s planned launch of cashless gaming in Nevada. BoltBetz has developed a system allowing players to digitally load funds directly into slot machines without using physical cash.
The Web3 platform DGaming has announced a partnership with games producer Shady Lady. DGaming is backed by industry veterans and Web3 pioneers, delivering “cutting-edge solutions that combine trust, scalability and a diverse game portfolio.”
Venture capital firm Yolo Investments manages in excess of €500m in capital across 100 exciting fintech, gaming and blockchain companies. The Yolo Investments’ Gaming fund, regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, has taken positions in fast-growth suppliers and operators, including Dabble and Enteractive. Yolo Investments (yolo.io) wants to hear from readers of this newsletter. Get in touch with your pitch, or for a chat about innovative products which can plug into our investment ecosystem.
Upcoming earnings
Oct 15: Entain, FDJ United, Rank
Oct 22: Churchill Downs (earnings), Rank CMD
Oct 23: Evolution, Churchill Downs (call), Boyd Gaming
Oct 24: Betsson
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