Prediction markets: the next frontier for CEECA operators?
Kristof Szucs, co-founder of Kyborg.ai and an iGaming industry veteran with more than thirty years of experience, analyses what the rapid growth of prediction markets in the United States means for operators in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA), and why the first mover in this space will not be a casino brand.
When Robinhood’s event contracts revenue grows 320 per cent year-on-year amid a record $8.8 billion in trading volume, the industry tends to split into two camps: those who see the emergence of a legitimate new product class and those who see a regulatory time bomb. Szucs thinks both sides are right, and that is precisely the point.
“$8.8 billion in volume is not a hedging market. It is a betting market operating under a different regulator,” he says. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) framework gives prediction market operators access to all fifty US states without a single state gambling licence, and this, in his words, is “a real product advantage” that gambling regulators “at the state and federal level have not yet decided how to challenge.”
Poker before Black Friday
For Szucs, what is happening to prediction markets is a familiar story. “This feels like poker in the years before Black Friday: the product was positioned as a game of skill rather than gambling, operators built payment workarounds to move deposits and winnings through the banking system, and the industry maintained that this was something fundamentally different. Until it wasn’t.”
Black Friday in online poker refers to 15 April 2011, when the US Department of Justice filed charges that effectively took down the largest poker sites, such as PokerStars, Full Tilt and UltimateBet, leading to domain seizures, frozen payments and a sharp contraction of the market.
The relevant parallel here is not in the details of the workarounds but in the structural logic: a product with an obvious betting mechanic gaining market access through a regulatory category it was never designed to cover. Major gambling organisations are already pushing back against granting prediction markets a separate regulatory status. Szucs is convinced that “sooner or later, the same verdict will arrive here.” His only question is how long the window lasts, and who establishes their position before it closes.
MiFID as the door into Europe
For European operators watching the American experiment, Szucs frames the question differently: not “will they enter the event contracts market” but “will the Robinhood model return to Europe through a different door.” That door, he argues, is not a gambling licence; it is the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).
“If a CEECA operator wanted to offer European users a Robinhood-style product, the most straightforward legal path does not run through a national gambling regulator but through a financial instruments framework. The cost is high, the compliance requirements are unfamiliar, and regulators have not yet drawn a clear boundary. That ambiguity is the opportunity.”
Operators with the capital and platform capabilities to compete in this space, such as Superbet, Fortuna, and brands under FDJ United and Banijay, currently have no direct access to the US event contracts market. But Szucs points to what they should be watching right now: where the CFTC draws the line, what state attorneys general choose to challenge, and how the gambling lobby positions itself. That process will determine what the European equivalent eventually looks like.
“The operators that move into event contracts as a regulated product will be the ones that already have securities-grade compliance teams. Most CEECA iGaming firms do not.”
His forecast from there is deliberate: “The first European mover into event contracts will not be a casino brand. It will be a fintech that hires an iGaming compliance head.”
M&A as the backdrop
Prediction markets are developing against a backdrop of structural change in CEECA that is already underway, independent of the American experiment. The Banijay deal, the acquisition of Tipico, bringing Betclic, Tipico and Admiral under a single structure, is, in Szucs’s words, “a Western European integration story”: three brands, six regulated markets, €100 million in target synergies, and €3 billion in debt that needs returns before the platform integration is complete. “CEECA is not Banijay’s first concern. It is the next one.”
But M&A activity in the region has already started without Banijay. Szucs describes the acquisition of MaxBet in Romania by Super Technologies as the inflection point. The Czech Republic and Slovakia, in his assessment, are next in line: “mid-size operators, regulatory frameworks mature enough to make pricing predictable, and no domestic capital large enough to defend independence.”
Hungary, he argues, is the dark horse. Until 12 April 2026, the Hungarian online market was held by a single company whose financial profile showed “95-100 per cent dividend payout at 3-6 per cent reinvestment”, which Szucs calls “the structure of an extraction vehicle, not a growth operator, and the structure of a business built for a political configuration that no longer exists.”
“Somewhere in the boardrooms of Super and Fortuna, someone has already started going through the Hungarian market directories,” he says. If that scenario plays out, Hungary becomes “the first market in CEECA to open as a result of political change rather than regulatory reform.”
His timeline is specific: two more Romania-style transactions in the region within eighteen months – the Czech Republic first, followed by Slovakia. The eastward expansion of the Banijay model is a 2027 question, not a 2026 one.
What this means for operators
The two processes, consolidation through M&A and the emergence of prediction markets via a financial regulatory framework, are running in parallel and have not yet converged in CEECA. But Kristof Szucs identifies a common denominator: in both cases, the advantage goes to those who build the right compliance infrastructure before the market opens, not after. His vision for compliance infrastructure will be published exclusively on SiGMA News over the coming weeks.
For mid-level operators in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, he forecasts M&A activity under the Banijay model and recommends closely tracking the process. For those considering event contracts as a potential next product step, the key question is whether the company has personnel with hands-on experience in a financial regulatory framework. If not, the priority is not the product, but hiring.
This article was first published in Russian on 4 May 2026.
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