The New York Islanders kicked off their hockey season with three straight losses. The US men’s soccer team has aims to make a deep run in next year’s World Cup. Soon, investors may be able to put a price on those performances. That’s if InPlay Global Inc. wins approval from regulators to operate a trading […]
The New York Islanders kicked off their hockey season with three straight losses. The US men’s soccer team has aims to make a deep run in next year’s World Cup. Soon, investors may be able to put a price on those performances.
That’s if InPlay Global Inc. wins approval from regulators to operate a trading venue it’s seeking to unveil next year. The platform would allow investors to trade securities linked to the performance of sports teams, with a price determined by their wins, losses or ties.
“Just like stocks trading in a secondary market, we are providing access to all investors to trade and invest in sports performance,” InPlay President Troy Kane said in an interview. “We are trying to make this a broader asset class, similar to how ETF’s were developed years ago.”
Sports wagers have become an increasingly big business, helped by a friendlier regulatory regime and technology that enables online bets in a matter of clicks. Traditional financial firms like CME Group Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange Inc. are getting in on the action, partnering with FanDuel Inc. and Polymarket which allow users to place bets on sports outcomes.
The products InPlay plans to offer would be structured in a similar way to an exchange-traded-fund or index fund, tracking the performance of professional and college teams but not owning the team outright, Kane said.
InPlay said in a statement that its securities don’t “represent ownership in a team and are distinct from betting, gaming, fantasy, or prediction markets, which rely on odds or binary outcomes rather than market-based price formation.” The company has submitted applications to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for the platform’s approval.
Prior to his role at InPlay, where he is also chief operating officer, Kane was president of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and chief executive officer of the futures business at Miami International Holdings Inc. Before that, he was COO for counterparty strategy and global head of derivatives and fixed-income, currencies and commodities development at Citadel Securities, the market-making giant founded by Ken Griffin.
Predictions tied to sporting events have attracted controversy in recent months, with debate surrounding the legality of some products. Firms like Kalshi Inc. offer yes-or-no wagers on the outcomes of games but some US states argue these event contracts circumvent their rules on sports gambling. For its part, Kalshi contends that since the firm comes under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, these are regulated financial products.
Kane said prices for its “performance securities” would be assigned during the pre-season for a professional or college sports team, based on projected game results. InPlay will take those predictions and “assign a revenue valuation that is applied to teams, equally,” Kane said.
Similar to trading equities and ETFs, designated market-making firms will help facilitate the buying and selling of the performance-related securities, matching buyers and sellers in an open market. As well as teams, InPlay aims to eventually add individual athletes, according to Kane.
InPlay would start with the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association and then add other sports including soccer by the FIFA World Cup in 2026 — though it doesn’t have licensing agreements with the teams or leagues. The venue would operate around the clock — including the weekends — to capture the changing outcome of games in real time.
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