Welcome to the jungle: In attempting to stifle federally regulated sports event trading, the US gaming industry is setting itself against a consumer that is far more willing to embrace innovative trading opportunities, according to Jacob Fortinsky, CEO at Novig.

• Speaking to Earnings+More, Fortinsky said it was “high time for sports to be treated as a legitimate asset class that can be traded the same way crypto or options are traded.”
• “And I think there’s been this shift in consumer behavior over the last decade, where sports bettors are increasingly viewing these markets as a financial product,” he added.

We got fun and games: Hammering home the contested message that prediction markets are fairer than regular sportsbooks, Fortinsky noted that sports betting is the “one industry that regularly bans power users.”

• “When you unshackle the market, you allow a two-sided marketplace to thrive and you see this explosion of volume, and it’s similar to the early days of Uber and Lyft.”
• “You’re 10 times more likely to win on the whole on a platform like Novig compared to a traditional sportsbook. And so I think the only people who lose are the casinos, basically.”
• “And fuck the casinos,” he added for emphasis.

Money is the anthem of success: Back in February, Novig announced a $75m Series B funding round, led by Pantera Capital with the participation of Multicoin, Makers Fund and others alongside, taking its total raised past $105m since launch in late 2024.

• But Fortinsky said the money raised is a “lagging indicator” of the company’s success.
• “The real success is the traction of the platform,” he added.

You think that’s big? Impressive as that is, it is still way behind the money raised to date by Kalshi, which is reportedly seeking a new raise that would value the business at $40bn (see below). “Raising $75m, it is really still a small fraction of what we’re going up against,” Fortinsky said.

• But, he added, Novig is used to “competing with people with hundreds of millions or billions on their balance sheet.”

I’ve been on a journey: Novig started its journey as a betting exchange seeking out regulated market opportunities before pivoting to a sports sweepstakes model. But Fortinsky insisted the move into prediction markets was the “vision from day one.”

• “Ultimately, the core vision of the company has not shifted,” he said. “Truthfully, I think this is exactly how I envisioned the market playing out.”
• While the prediction markets have “accelerated a little faster than I would have expected,” he insisted Novig has been “building for this world since day one.”

Nothing can stop us now: Pressed on whether any regulator or court could now rein the sector in, he didn’t hesitate to push back. “It’s here to stay,” he said, characterizing the opposition as narrow and self-interested.

• “It’s a straightforward interpretation of the law and the federal government has a far more legitimate case than the states, which are just concerned about losing tax revenue,” he added.
• A survey released this week from the Coalition for Prediction Markets found bipartisan support among the public for Federal oversight over state-by-state control.

In the public interest: The conviction that consumer adoption has created facts on the ground no agency can undo is the same current running beneath Kalshi’s reported flotation talks, and Fortinsky sees the listing question in generational terms rather than tactical ones.

• “The generational companies, the category-defining companies should be public so that the public can get a piece of the next generation of retail finance and of sports trading,” he said.
• But deeper private liquidity means “there isn’t the same impetus or need to go public as there once was.”

Meta verse: He is similarly unbothered by the prospect of a land grab from the technology platforms, including Meta’s reported interest this week. “It’s just inevitable that this is the next wave of retail trading,” he said. “It starts with sports. They are the tip of the iceberg.”

Welcome mat: Also this week, Novig announced it has hired Eliezer Mishory, an ex-DOGE staffer and former Kalshi official, as its new chief regulatory and legal affairs officer.