The Business of YouTube

A weekly strategic lens for senior leaders into how YouTube is reshaping the business of technology, sports, music, entertainment, and culture.

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To your favourite newsletter, The Business of YouTube, brought to you by Paola Marinone and Bengü Atamer, founders of BuzzMyVideos and previously at YouTube and Google. We are bringing our exclusive insights from 20 years of experience leading strategy at YouTube and Google.

The Liquidity of Fandom: Why Sports CEOs are Betting on Prediction Markets

“Audiences Don’t Just Want to Watch, They Want to Shape It”: An Interview with Ed Abis from Dizplai👇

For decades, the sports industry has measured success through passive reach, eyeballs, impressions, and ratings.

But in 2026, the currency has changed. We have entered the era of priced sentiment.

With the recent wave of partnerships, most notably DAZN x Polymarket and MLS x Polymarket (Jan 2026), sports rights are becoming to be about the underlying market.

We believe, a prediction market is beyond "Betting 2.0." It is more like a real-time, dollar-backed Demand Index for your product.

THE BIG MOVES: 2026 Partnership Landscape

The early weeks of 2026 have seen a "land grab" for prediction market exclusivity. Here is how the leaders are positioning themselves:

🎙️ THE EXPERT VIEW: Ed Abis (Dizplai) on the Prediction Pivot

To understand how interactive data fuels these new markets, we spoke with Ed Abis, CEO at Dizplai. His team sits at the intersection of live broadcast and second-screen engagement, powering the "active content" layers for global rights holders.

Q1: How can rights owners use 'pre-broadcast' engagement data to protect market integrity against 'courtsiders' or high-frequency traders?

Ed Abis: “I think the industry needs to get ahead of this quickly... Fan behaviour often moves faster than the broadcast. Chat velocity spikes, sentiment shifts, poll responses, all of this captures the emotional pulse before the traditional TV feed catches up. First, it’s an early warning system; if chat activity spikes but the broadcast hasn’t reflected that moment yet, that delta becomes a signal to flag suspicious market activity. Second, fan engagement creates a 'crowd truth' layer.“

On Integrity: The "Crowd Truth" vs. The Courtsider

Q2: DAZN's integration of Polymarket suggests that real-time fan sentiment is now a tradeable asset. Based on the interaction data you collect, polls, chat velocity, and sentiment spikes on YouTube, how closely do these 'engagement signals' correlate with shifts in prediction market liquidity? Are we reaching a point where second-screen activity serves as the 'primary oracle' for setting event contract prices?

Ed Abis: “I think we're closer to this than most people realise.

For instance, The DAZN and Polymarket partnership is significant because it makes the connection between viewing and trading explicit. You're watching a fight, you're seeing real-time probability data on screen, and the line between being a fan and being a market participant starts to blur.

What TKO and UFC have done with Polymarket is arguably even more interesting. They've created a Fan Prediction Scoreboard that visualises how the crowd is forecasting each fight as it unfolds. That's essentially turning fan sentiment into a data-driven narrative in real time, and it's the first time a major sports organisation has given a prediction market platform exclusive rights to embed this directly into the broadcast experience.

The reason is simple. Fans on YouTube and social platforms are reacting in real time, often faster than the traditional broadcast. They're closer to the raw emotion of the moment. And when you have hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously expressing a view through a poll, a prediction, or just the velocity of their chat messages, that's an enormous amount of signal.

I think the "primary oracle" framing is really interesting. In prediction markets, an oracle is the source of truth that settles a contract. Traditionally that's official results or verified data feeds. But what I see emerging is fan engagement data becoming a "sentiment oracle." Not settling the contract, but absolutely leading the price discovery.”

On Market Oracles: Sentiment Leading Price

Q3: Which interactive features show the highest conversion from 'passive viewer' to 'active market participant'? Is the future a rev-share on the trade rather than a CPM on ads?

Ed Abis: “The shift from viewing to trading is the natural evolution of the shift from passive to active audiences; audiences don't just want to watch content, they want to shape it. Prediction-based formats are the highest converters because when you give someone the chance to predict what happens next, the conversion is dramatic. The reason is the 'IKEA Effect', when people contribute, they value it more, deepening engagement and watch time as they check back to see if they were right.

The bridge between free prediction features and actual trading is a funnel where free polls build the habit before offering trades with real stakes. While CPM isn't going away, the rev-share on trade model is where the growth is because you are monetizing conviction rather than just attention. Conviction is more valuable to stakeholders as fans who have made a trade are 'locked in' and won't leave at halftime.

This peer-to-peer exchange model feels more aligned with fan-first principles than traditional betting, and with $24 billion in trading volume already at Kalshi, the scale is there. The real point is the engagement layer, the interactive features and community energy, that converts a viewer into a trader inside the content experience. The organizations that build for this participation will define the next era of sports media.”

On Monetization: Moving from CPM to Rev-Share

THE YOUTUBE EDGE: Capturing the "Second Screen"

In our view, YouTube is of course where the "Oracle" lives.

While the game happens on the first screen, the valuation of the game happens on the second.

1. The "Oracle" Effect: High-velocity YouTube chats and real-time polls are now "front-running" the markets. Senior leaders are using this data to protect market integrity, identifying "sentiment spikes" seconds before they reflect in the trading volume.

2. Contextual Commerce: If a fan votes in a YouTube poll that a player will score next, the DAZN/Polymarket integration allows for a one-click conversion from "opinion" to "trade." This is the shortest path from engagement to revenue in sports history.

3. Retention in the Blowout: Prediction markets solve the "fourth quarter problem." Even in a 30-point blowout, the spread and micro-contracts (e.g., "Will the backup QB throw a TD?") keep the YouTube "Watch Time" metrics high.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you own the rights, you own the data that moves the market. On YouTube, that data is generated every time a fan hits a button.

Want to discuss how to shape your YouTube strategy, talk to us.

Further Reading on Prediction Markets

Watch the latest The Business of YouTube Podcast

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