• Kalshi NFL pricing trails DraftKings, Flutter in week 11
• It’s been a recurring theme this football season
• Prediction market’s NBA pricing nothing to crow about, either

Bad officiating is an unfortunately prominent theme in the NFL this year. So is bad pricing on Kalshi, which reared its head again during week 11.

A Kalshi social media ad. The prediction market’s week 11 NFL pricing trailed DraftKings and FanDuel. (Image: X)

This season, there has been some evidence that, on a sporadic basis, Kalshi offered superior pricing relative to DraftKings and FanDuel — the two largest online sportsbook operators — that trend hasn’t been consistent and in Week 11, the prediction market’s NFL money line and totals pricing was 3% worse than DraftKings’ while trailing FanDuel by 4%, according to Citizens Equity Research Analyst Jordan Bender.

We maintain our view that betting exchanges do not act as a competitive threat to profitability for existing operators in the legal sports betting states given that the number one selling point of better pricing is not true for now,” observes Bender. “Said another way, players that are not price sensitive have a larger betting menu on traditional betting apps, and price-sensitive customers are not getting superior pricing for the most liquid sports markets on Kalshi.”

The analyst and his team tracked NFL pricing on DraftKings, FanDuel, and Kalshi on Friday, Nov. 14, leveraging 28 data points to come to the conclusion the prediction market trailed its sportsbook competitors.

Why Football Pricing Matters at Kalshi

Traditional sportsbooks charge a vig on bets, but prediction markets such as Kalshi don’t do that. Rather, those exchanges charge transaction fees to retail traders while allowing professional traders and sharp bettors to transact on the platform at reduced or no fees in exchange for the liquidity they provide.

Fees or vigs are expected, but if bettors perceive DraftKings, FanDuel, and friends as offering superior pricing — data suggest that’s exactly what’s happening — they may have reduced incentive to leave those sportsbooks for venues such as Kalshi. Still, it’s clear plenty of bettors and traders are using Kalshi to express views on football because football games represented the exchange’s top 10 markets over the weekend with seven of the highest volume markets being NFL contests.

Kalshi’s top markets for the weekend of No. 15-16. (Image: Kalshi/Dustin Gouker)

“We tracked combos (parlays) on Kalshi by taking the average odds and implied vig for 1) the over and 2) the favorite across every NFL game (14 data points),” adds Bender. “The implied vig for Kalshi was 24.1%, below DraftKings’ 24.8% but above FanDuel’s 23.4%, without the transaction fee. Directionally, Kalshi pricing has tracked in line with sports betting companies through the first several weeks, indicating the market makers are using unofficial pricing data, and/or scraping pricing.”

Kalshi Has NBA Issues, Too

The NBA season is still in its early innings, but it’s ramping up quickly and it’s clear Kalshi has some issues to work through on that front, too. Accomplishing that objective is important because after football, basketball is the next most wagered on sport in the U.S. and the NBA is a high hold season for sportsbook operators.

“We tracked 12 NBA games last Thursday for games later that day. Kalshi had worse average pricing for over/under and game outcomes, on average. Kalshi pricing across these games was 4.80%, 6% worse than DraftKings at 4.51% and 8% worse than FanDuel at 4.43%,” concludes Bender. “We believe the inferior pricing is driven by less liquid markets compared to NFL games.”

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