CEO Tarek Mansour said Karshi’s Super Bowl Sunday saw trading volume exceed $1 billion, a single-day record.
The company said that volume increased by 2,700% year-on-year. The platform allows users to purchase event contracts for political, pop culture, financial market, and sports outcomes.
“It’s been a great weekend,” Mansour told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “Kalsi became the biggest brand at this year’s Super Bowl without running a Super Bowl ad. Our product did it.”
Mansour said halftime performer Bad Bunny’s opening song brought in more than $100 million, and bets on who would perform with Bad Bunny exceeded $45 million.
The platform’s Super Bowl deal wasn’t without its challenges, however. Co-founder Luana López Lara posted on social media during the match that some users’ deposits were delayed due to high traffic.
“Your money is safe and on its way, it just takes a while to land,” she wrote.
Calci has come under fire recently, along with other prediction markets, as concerns about insider trading have led to increased skepticism across the industry. Last week, before the Super Bowl, the platform announced additional efforts to expand its monitoring and enforcement efforts to identify and remove accounts participating in insider trading.
“The risk of insider trading is very real for the stock market,” Mansour said on Tuesday.
“As a financial market regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, we have the same rules and the same enforcement mechanisms as the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange,” he added.
Mansour said the platform has conducted 200 investigations and suspended related accounts over the past year, some of which have been referred to law enforcement authorities for prosecution.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalsi have a commercial relationship that includes a minority stake.
