Vegas Magic

About Vegas Magic

On Monday, the AiA announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Association of Nigerian Bookmakers to establish closer ties on matters both in Nigeria and across Africa.

The MoU will explore opportunities for collaboration on areas such as safer gambling, player protection and taxation.

It’s the second MoU the AiA has signed in the last three weeks, having established a framework for closer cooperation with the Association of Gaming Operators of Kenya in late August.

What is Vegas Magic?

Across the market, operators delivered high double-digit gains compared with Labor Day weekend, which featured a full slate of college football games but no NFL contests. Two operators, DraftKings and Underdog each saw triple-digit growth, delivering weekly increases of 125% and 119%, respectively. Three others, Polymarket, Crypto.com and Novig, saw gains of at least 30%, led by Polymarket with a weekly increase of 46%.

One interesting nugget surrounds weekend figures at Kalshi, where volume on Sunday only surpassed prior daily activity by $34 million, BofA data shows. Typically, Sunday volume for the quarter dwarfs that of College Football Saturdays due to the voracious demand for NFL offerings. BofA analyst Shaun Kelley attributes the irregularity to the possibility that Kalshi is “over indexing” on college sports.

Kelley also cited improvements at Robinhood as a possible factor for the regression at Kalshi. Just before the NFL season, Robinhood took a minority stake in Crypto.com and struck a deal to begin routing NFL contracts to OG.com, the site’s regulated prediction market platform.

What is Vegas Magic?

More recently, Polymarket has paid top dollar for prominent athletes and celebrities to promote its prediction market. The company’s paid partners include LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Spike Lee, and Craig Robinson.

The Polymarket water tower can be seen from I-94, but isn’t overly prominent, as the interstate passes beneath three bridges—Concord Avenue, train tracks, and a service road—near the Mount Elliott exit.

But the advertisement is still garnering plenty of attention online and in the news, with the controversy surrounding the Polymarket branding a major topic of discussion in prediction market and gaming circles.