ADI Predictstreet, the official prediction market partner of the World Cup, is facing accusations of baiting users with ticket giveaways to boost its trading volume. Many users have complained that the company has failed to honor ticket prizes as well as other bonuses and promotions.
Others also report slow deposit processing times and a lack of response from the platform’s support team.
“Is the Adipredictstreet support team really this indifferent toward its members?” wrote one user on Discord, complaining that their deposit still has not been honored after four days.
The company signed a deal with FIFA in April despite not having a working platform. It is part of International Holding, a conglomerate led by Sheik Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a senior United Arab Emirates security official. It secured a license in Gibraltar shortly before signing the deal with FIFA.
Tickets Bait to Get Users on Platform
As the World Cup kicked off last month, ADIPredictStreet launched a competition promising to reward users with free tickets to matches.
“Tickets were only bait to get people onto the platform,” Felix Molaug told the Wall Street Journal. Crypto trader Molaug said he reached $19,000 in trading volume, which should have earned him tickets to knockout matches. He did not receive them, however.
Vukašin Petrović, a Serbian trader, said he also won tickets, but the company kept delaying. He finally received the tickets electronically, twenty minutes before kick-off for a match in Houston, almost 6,000 miles away from Serbia.
Company Admits to Problems Honoring Promotions
The company admitted that it has struggled to honor its promotions.
“As a new market entrant, we recognize that scaling our promotional activities has presented operational challenges, and we acknowledge that certain aspects of our prize fulfillment process have required refinement,” an ADI Predictstreet spokesman said.
Last week, in a Discord post, it said it was changing the promotion’s terms to reward “genuine and deserving users” with tickets to the semi-final and final.
It blamed users abusing the system for the change, saying it had “identified users attempting to farm referrals, create non-organic activity, and abuse the system to collect points and climb the leaderboard.”
It added that it was planning new promotions in the near future, focusing on “rewarding all users who have used our platform and continue to do so.”
On the problem of slow deposit processing times, it said, “Please allow some time for wallet funding and processing.”
Kalshi Thrives as ADIPredictStreet Struggles
Kalshi has perhaps been the biggest beneficiary of the ADIPredictStreet deal with FIFA. While the UAE-backed platform struggles with promotions and generating substantial trading volumes, Kalshi partnered with the company.
In the US, if a user attempts to access ADIPredictStreet, they are directed to Kalshi. The prediction market’s branding also features prominently alongside ADIPredictStreet in advertising displays at matches.
This has helped the operator reach record volumes during the tournament. In the 30 days leading up to June 8, users traded over $40 billion on Kalshi, more than double the $17.9 billion in the same period before the World Cup.
Sports events and combos/parlays accounted for 87% of all trading volume, Dustin Gouker noted in his newsletter covering prediction markets.
Kalshi had tried to broker a deal directly with FIFA to become its prediction market partner before the tournament. However, soccer’s governing body wanted $150 million for the honor. The terms of Kalshi’s deal with ADIPredictStreet have not been revealed.
In addition to its deal with ADIPredictStreet, Kalshi is also attracting users with better odds than sportsbooks. The huge volumes are sure to attract further attention from state regulators, who accuse the platform of operating an unlicensed sports betting platform.
