Clover Islands

How to play Clover Islands

That growth reflects the expanding number and variety of sports contracts. ITF tennis is particularly dependent on official data because its more than 60,000 annual matches are not generally televised. Unofficially monitoring a tour moving between locations such as Bogotá and Bali would be difficult, Monk noted.

Streaming is also becoming part of the product. Monk said prediction market interfaces had moved beyond their earlier trading-led presentation to incorporate streams, player propositions and combinations resembling sportsbook bet builders.

“It was still very much a trading kind of UX,” he said of Kalshi at the beginning of the year. “The actual product offering has come a long way.”

About Clover Islands

Strip away the language of contracts, order books and event trading and Bernard Marantelli has a blunt description of what is happening inside US sports prediction markets. “Kalshi is a sportsbook that’s just not allowed to have an in-house risk team,” says the founder of White Swan Data, one of the specialist firms now making markets on prediction exchanges.

The difference is all about the risk function. A sportsbook employs traders to price bets and manage its exposure. An exchange provides an API through which firms compete to quote prices and supply liquidity.

“Here’s an API. Bernard and 88 other people can market-make all these request-for-quotes (RFQs),” Marantelli says. “Some people might come in and just do esports because they’re esports experts. Others do everything. Some focus on same-game parlays. But it’s a sportsbook.”

What is Clover Islands?

Handle analog is a metric used as a cleaner comparison between sportsbooks and prediction markets because the latter’s volume doesn’t compare evenly with sportsbook handle.

Based on its projections, EKG sees the overall sports wagering industry growing 8% year-over-year, outpacing the current baseline growth rate of 5% (a figure that strips out temporary boosts from the 2026 World Cup).

Assuming that 8% spurt is realized, it’d be impressive because since the end of the 2025 football season, only Missouri and Alberta, Canada joined the live and legal sports betting party with Arkansas opening to DraftKings and FanDuel earlier this year.