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How to play The Knight King
Vital Vegas ranked the display No. 4 on his 2014 list of “10 Things You Can Rub for Good Luck in Las Vegas Without Getting Arrested,” a list that featured three other Caesars Palace entries: the hand of the Caesars statue (No. 1); Joe Louis’s boxing gloves (No. 8); and the toe of Michelangelo’s David replica (No. 9).
The barge itself never actually floated, by the way. That was just a myth. It sat on a fixed platform that created a mild rocking motion. That piece of Vegas engineering, like the statue’s original perch, is now history.
The barge functioned as an intimate stage graced by legendary performers, including Dionne Warwick, Blues Traveler, Matt Goss, and CeeLo Green. Its final performer was another Vegas icon rumored to be powered by hydraulics: Wayne Newton. His “Up Close & Personal” residency in 2019 was the lounge’s final act before the pandemic shut down the Strip for 90 days and closed Cleopatra’s Barge for good in March 2020.
What is The Knight King?
With all that in mind, it’s not surprising that Macquarie expects sports event contracts will drive approximately 80% of taker volume this year, but Beynon sees other categories growing over the long term.
“We expect non-sports categories such as economics, politics, crypto, and entertainment to gain share over time,” says the analyst.
Prediction market operators are on legal losing streaks, confirming that Beynon is onto something when he says the regulatory environment is the biggest risk facing the industry.
What is The Knight King?
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.”
