Meta is reportedly preparing to enter the fast-growing prediction markets industry with a new standalone app internally known as ‘Arena’. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has asked a small team inside the company to build the product, which would allow users to make predictions about future events ranging from elections and economic data to sports and technology, reports The New York Times.
Unlike Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger, Arena is being developed as a separate app. Early versions are expected to use a points-based system rather than real-money trading, allowing the social media giant to test user interest before dealing with the complex regulations that come with financial prediction markets.
The project comes as prediction markets are seeing explosive growth around the world. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have become much more popular over the past two years, especially after the 2024 US presidential election, when traders poured billions of dollars into contracts linked to political outcomes. Estimates indicate that monthly trading volume across major prediction-market platforms increased from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to around $24 billion by April 2026.
Notably, prediction markets work differently from traditional polls or surveys. Instead of asking people what they think, users buy and sell contracts tied to specific outcomes. The market price then shows the collective probability assigned to an event.
However, the prediction-market industry is attracting increasing attention from regulators. As trading activity has surged, concerns have grown about insider information, market manipulation, and unusual trading patterns. For example, reports indicate that Kalshi investigated more than 400 suspicious trades in the first months of 2026 alone, already surpassing the total reviewed during the previous year.
For Meta, the attraction goes beyond financial opportunities. Prediction markets generate a constant stream of data about what people expect to happen in the future. That fits naturally with Meta’s business, which is built around understanding user behaviour and organizing information at massive scale. All this becomes even more significant as the social media giant already has an unmatched distribution network, with about 3.56 billion people using at least one Meta app every day.
The move also highlights how aggressively Zuckerberg is expanding Meta beyond traditional social media. While most attention has focused on Meta’s AI push, the company is simultaneously exploring new product categories. Earlier this year, Meta increased its projected 2026 capital spending to between $125 billion and $145 billion. For now, Arena remains an internal project, and there is no guarantee it will be released publicly.
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Ashutosh is a Senior Writer at The Tech Portal, largely reporting on new tech, and intersection of technology and business. Ashutosh’s career spans across nearly a decade of technology writing across multiple platforms and languages.
