Tradesports.com
Intrade was a prediction market where users could make trades on political and world events. It was really popular on Wall Street. Intrade shut down its operations in the U.S. last year after being sued by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
Instead of predicting election outcomes like Intrade, the new site will predict sporting events. It's basically fantasy sports meets Wall Street.
The site will let its users play fantasy sports in real-time for real money. In other words, users can make trades in real-time based on how a game is going similar to how they would trade the stock market.
"It's really made for the wheelhouse of these traders who love sports," the company's CEO Ron Bernstein, a former options floor trader, told us.
Bernstein said that it's not a sports betting site. It's "skill-based fantasy sports" on a real-time exchange.
Here's how it works:
Tradesports.com will offer trading contests that have entry fees as low as $2 (There are also free-to-play games for fun, too). Every contestant gets the same stake. They can buy and sell positions in sports teams and players amongst other contestants during the game. Whoever makes the most money at the end of the game wins.
There's also a chatroom for every contest and a leaderboard showing contestants standings.
Tradesports.com is only for U.S. residents. It's available in 40 out of 50 states. (The original European Tradesports.com betting site closed in 2008.)
Like the way Intrade was good with predicting political outcomes, Bernstein believes that Tradesports would be a great way to gather data and analysis on sports teams and players.
Tradesports.com is available in the public beta today. They're currently signing folks up for the waitlist.
Tradesports.com