Meta created the Prediction Markets app

Polymarket and Kalshi, prediction markets where users can bet on outcomes as diverse as the Super Bowl and the length of the State of the Union address, are among the fastest growing destinations on the Internet.

Mark Zuckerberg has noticed — and he wants in on the action.

Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, recently dispatched a small team from his company to build a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, two employees with knowledge of the matter said. Users would not bet money, and the app would instead likely rely on a video game-like points system, one person said, although the company did not rule out the possible use of real-money betting.

The app is internally referred to as “Arena” and would operate independently of Meta’s social networking apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, said the employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential plans. Meta aims to grow the app by leveraging its large social media audience and driving them to use it, they said.

The effort, which insiders characterized as experimental but a top priority, is part of a broader effort by Mr. Zuckerberg to create new types of apps based on emerging social behaviors online. More than 3.56 billion people visit one or more Meta apps every day, a number that raises questions about whether these platforms have reached saturation point.

Arena is one of the few apps that Meta tries out. Others include one called Meta Photos, another standalone app that would use artificial intelligence to create new types of media, the staff said.

Meta declined to comment.

For years, Mr. Zuckerberg tracked growth by looking at how user behavior was changing on the Internet, then quickly followed fast-growing competitors like Snap and others by cloning their apps and features.

These efforts have had mixed success. Meta has previously struggled with new standalone apps, mainly because it was difficult to get people to find and download them. In 2019, under a team called “New Product Experimentation”, employees experimented with creating a variety of social apps, including those focused on podcasts and travel, as well as music and matchmaking. Little has taken off, three people familiar with the projects said.

But as Facebook and Instagram increasingly provide video-centric content, Meta executives believe there are fewer areas inside the apps to test new product ideas, the people said. This prompted the company to focus on standalone applications.

This is not the first time Meta has experimented with predictive markets. In 2020 it posted a forecasta crowdsourced market forecasting app that got people guessing about the world in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The app was positioned as a way to share crowdsourced knowledge. He used a point system to predict the future. Target closed application in 2022.

Since then, prediction markets have turned into a cultural phenomenon, appearing during major sporting events and on telecasts of the Golden Globes. In 2025 Kalshi and Polymarket drew a combination $50 billion in online business. This year, the total amount has already exceeded 130 billion dollars.

This success attracted the attention of other companies. A prediction market operator can make money by collecting fees on each bet, potentially a huge source of income. Traditional gambling companies like FanDuel and DraftKings they started offering them, like Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange. Trump Media & Technology Group, President Trump’s social media company, also unveiled plans for a prediction market.

Kalshi declined to comment. Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The rise of betting on prediction markets has brought intense legal scrutiny. Since these markets offer odds on virtually everything, they create new opportunities for people to use inside information to make money.

A pattern of suspicious trading at Polymarket in particular has raised concerns in Washington. In April, federal prosecutors in New York accused a member of US special forces of using insider information to place bets on a top-secret plan to capture Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. The soldier made more than $400,000 from the operation, according to prosecutors.

Concerns about insider trading and other potential abuses have turned attention to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an obscure federal agency that oversees prediction markets. The agency, never particularly large, has shrunk under the Trump administration, leaving it with the smallest staff in years, even as its responsibilities have rapidly expanded.

Meta insiders cautioned that Arena remains in development and may not be released.

But as executives look for ways to keep the world’s largest social network thriving, Mr. Zuckerberg appears to be relying on his well-worn product development strategy: Follow the users.