Prediction Market Users Skew Toward DeFi, Not Sports Bets

The ELI Report finds an estimated 17 million Americans will use prediction markets in 2026 and that the typical U.S. user is a DeFi or crypto enthusiast and a tech worker rather than a traditional sports bettor. The analysis shows a 40% to 50% overlap with sports gambling but identifies a distinct user profile focused on technology, decentralized finance and probabilistic reasoning.

ELI, short for Emotional Logic Interfaces, based its findings on about 100 million online signals and extrapolated behaviors across roughly 220 million online accounts using anonymized data licensed from firms including GlobalWebIndex and YouGov. The firm applied artificial intelligence to map retail, media and social behaviors and build audience profiles that the report says reflect observed actions rather than predictive guessing.

The report notes that sports-event contracts account for an estimated 85% to 90% of trading volume on some exchanges, yet many regular users do not view their activity as gambling. ELI’s behavioral analysis found these users are less likely than the average American to identify as gamblers and often say they avoid traditional gambling because they dislike outcomes driven purely by chance.

Compared with the general public, prediction market users are more likely to take high investment risks and to follow politics and crypto. The report finds users are 2.8 times more likely to choose high-risk investments, 13 times more likely to express interest in politics, and three times more likely to engage with cryptocurrency. The analysis also found users are four times more likely than average to have participated in fantasy sports.

Ian Baer, who created the ELI Report, said he expected a mix of crypto enthusiasts and sports gamblers but found a distinct professional profile among many traders. He called active traders people who study interdependencies among industries, policy and markets and treat market prices as data points for decision-making.

The report describes prediction market users as concentrated in technology roles and in secondary tech hubs such as Nashville, Austin, Fort Collins and Louisville. It contrasts that distribution with traditional Wall Street centers and links the geography to the platforms’ tech orientation and a user base more comfortable with DeFi and crypto than with traditional banking.

The report references the history of prediction exchanges in the U.S., noting academic projects that predate commercial platforms and a legal record that has included litigation and limited exemptions. Growth in prediction markets has drawn interest from established sports-betting companies and new entrants, and some operators have launched campaigns to attract more female users; the report found roughly 90% of current users identify as male.

ELI also reports that the large majority of participants lose money on exchanges, a gap between users’ analytical self-image and actual outcomes. The report flags that discrepancy as a factor that could affect future user growth and regulatory attention.