About this app
What is Treasure Quest?
Since returning its prediction market to the US, Polymarket has regularly engaged in nonconforming advertising. Painting a water tower in the company’s blue and branding the structure with its logo is the firm’s latest marketing ploy.
In March, Polymarket opened The Situation Room, a pop-up “newsbar” in Washington, DC. The bar and lounge’s televisions played various content related to prediction markets, like Bloomberg Terminals, cable news, and live social media feeds that were “dedicated to monitoring the situation.”
A month earlier, Polymarket opened a free grocery store in New York City. The promotion ran Feb. 12-16, with shoppers allowed to gather up to $50 per person in free groceries.
What is Treasure Quest?
For Marantelli, the exchange format could also cause some customers to lose money faster than they would with a conventional sportsbook. The ability to enter and exit positions creates a perception of flexibility, but that optionality can encourage users to commit more of their bankroll.
A customer might buy a team at 55 or 56 cents expecting the price to rise to 58 or 59 cents, he explains. If it falls to 45 cents instead, the trader may refuse to accept the loss and continue holding the position.
“People will lose money faster on exchanges for lots of reasons,” Marantelli says. “It inherently increases spend, volatility, lots of things. And you’re playing against a sharper audience than you’re playing against at the DraftKings sportsbook.”
How to play Treasure Quest
Though Maryland, Virginia, and New York do not have iGaming, prediction markets offering trading on everything from sports to politics continue to make their platforms accessible. Controversial sweepstakes casinos additionally continue to operate in Virginia and Maryland.
The American Gaming Association (AGA) believes many federally regulated prediction markets have transformed into illegal gambling and sports betting outfits, siphoning revenue from the legal, taxed gaming industry. Prediction markets, the trade group argues, threaten jobs and tax revenue, as do other forms of illegal gambling like skill games, sweepstakes casinos, and offshore sportsbooks.
Illegal gambling operators are thriving at the expense of American consumers, siphoning billions in tax revenue from state governments, and undercutting the efforts of the legal market,” said AGA President and CEO Bill Miller. “It’s time for a national crackdown on the pervasive illegal market that is draining state coffers and putting people at risk.”
