Industry watchers assumed prediction market traders were sports bettors in a new costume. Same gambling instinct, different platform. Fresh demographic data says that’s wrong. The 17 million people expected to use prediction markets this year skew younger, more male, and far more crypto-native than the average gambler. Most do not even consider themselves bettors. The audience that does look like this almost exactly? Crypto casino players.
The Data Says They Are Not Sports Bettors
The ELI Report, a behavioral analysis that crunched 100 million online signals across 220 million accounts, paints a different picture than most operators expected. Prediction market users overlap with the sports gambling crowd by only 40-50%, not the near-total overlap many assumed. 43% are actively less likely than the average person to identify as a gambler. They specifically dislike the chance element in traditional betting.
What they prefer is data, probability, and signal. They’re four times more likely than average to play fantasy sports, which the report links to “probabilistic” thinking. They’re 13 times more likely to follow politics closely. They follow markets like Kalshi and Polymarket for political and economic forecasting, not for the thrill of the win. Many treat prediction market data as a more reliable news source than legacy polling, the so-called “truth engines” framing.
A trader getting paid for an accurate election call does not feel like a winning sports bettor. It feels like an analyst hitting a forecast.
They Look A Lot Like Crypto Casino Players
Now compare that profile to the crypto casino audience.
Prediction market users engage with cryptocurrency at three times the national average. They’re 2.8 times more likely to choose high-risk investments. They’re DeFi proponents who often prefer self-custody to traditional banking. The US data clusters them in tech-heavy cities like Austin, Nashville, Fort Collins, and Louisville rather than Wall Street, and the international equivalent shows up wherever crypto adoption runs ahead of regulation. The user base is 90% male, more gender-skewed than any cohort the ELI Report has studied.
That same description fits almost every crypto casino we review. Self-custody-friendly. High risk tolerance. Crypto-native. Heavily male. Comfortable with platforms that operate outside traditional banking and regulatory perimeters. The big offshore brands built their growth on exactly this profile.
The overlap matters because every prediction market and every offshore crypto casino is now competing for the same audience. The user trading Polymarket contracts on a Tuesday is often the same user spinning a slot on Wednesday, depositing in USDT both times.
What It Means for Players
The implications run two ways.
For the big sportsbooks like DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics that have moved into prediction markets, the ELI data suggests they’re not just extending their existing audience. They’re competing for a customer base they don’t traditionally serve. Their marketing assumes those customers are already in the funnel, and the data says otherwise. That has knock-on effects for promotion budgets, product design, and how aggressively they go after Kalshi and Polymarket.
For players who already understand crypto wallets, USDT deposits, and self-custody, prediction markets feel native from day one. The product mechanics differ from casino games, but the trust layer, fast withdrawals, and payment rails are familiar. The crypto-native audience is the most natural early adopter, and the data backs that up.
For traditional sports bettors who came up on regulated betting sites, the same prediction market interface feels alien. The contracts trade like derivatives, the language uses probabilities instead of odds, and the workflow expects users who think in basis points. That gap may close over time as Kalshi, Polymarket, and the sportsbook giants invest in onboarding. For now, the data points to one clear pattern.
Prediction markets are not pulling sports bettors. They’re pulling the same audience that built the modern crypto casino sector, and that audience already knew where to find them.For a broader look at the major prediction markets and operators worth watching, we have that covered too.
