The explosive growth of prediction markets, particularly in gaming, has created unique opportunities for innovative streaming platforms. In this interview, Casey Grooms, co-founder of Soulbound, discusses how his platform is revolutionizing game streaming by integrating prediction markets with traditional content creation. Casey shares insights on Soulbound’s strategy to enhance viewer engagement, create new revenue streams for streamers, and bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 gaming communities.
Given the recent explosive growth in prediction markets, what do you think has fueled this sudden spike, and what can we expect in the next couple of months?
The politics have definitely fueled this spike in prediction markets. There have also been a couple of other advancements in the market. In the U.S., the courts recently ruled in favor of the legalization of prediction markets, with a separate company called Carsey, I believe, being the only officially approved entity to operate legally in the U.S. so far. This has generated a lot of momentum.
The Trump and Harris presidential election, along with the increasing legality and regulation around prediction markets, have contributed to this growth. As the legality eases, more competitors will enter the space, and it will start to become legal on a state-by-state basis. Users will also be able to take leverage on top of their predictions.
Do you foresee any challenges or disruptions in the prediction market industry in the next couple of months?
Any disruption would only be on the legality side. Other than that, I think it’s only going to continue growing and get more widespread adoption. It’s now being featured in the press, like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, almost weekly, referencing Polymarket and other prediction markets.
More and more mainstream people and non-Web3 individuals will understand how prediction markets work and how they can influence or not influence things, and change public opinion. People are also looking at the prediction market for the U.S. election as an indicator of who will win, and they’re interested in whether there are any bad actors influencing the prediction market and how to mitigate those circumstances.
As you’re a streaming platform, how do you work with the prediction markets?
Anyone can stream any game, and I can create a prediction market on top of that. We’re focused more on in-stream prediction markets, like whether I’m going to win or lose a match in an esports game. The streamers themselves will get a percentage of the pool as well, so they’re earning money and a portion of that pool just by playing the game and creating engaging content.
What measures should be taken to ensure that your streaming platform doesn’t become the second OnlyFans?
I think it’s very easy for us to maintain a Twitch-style, game-heavy dominance in what we’re doing. All of our partners are game developers themselves, so it’s not like we’re working with OnlyFans-style creators. If anything inappropriate does happen, it’s very easy for us to block or ban it. We can even make it behind a paywall, where users have to buy an NFT to enter the chat, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary anytime soon. Our audience is very gamer-heavy, so no one is really coming to Soulbound to find that type of content.
What incentives do you plan to implement in the future for both streamers and the audience?
We’re going to add a lot of new features to increase engagement. Next week, we’re adding a channel page that’s similar to Twitch, where users can chat with the streamer in real-time. We have the prediction features and the “Dare” feature coming soon, which will drive more engagement.
We’re also planning to start scheduling contests and leaning more toward the esports realm, where users can bet on teams during the streams. We’re also going to make it easy for games to sponsor streamers directly, allowing them to instantly pay streamers to display logos or banners on the stream. This will create more engagement and revenue opportunities for the streamers.
What’s the current state of Web3 gaming? How engaged are the developers and players in streaming these games?
Right now, we differentiate between Web2 and Web3, but our streamers can stream any game, and it doesn’t matter what the game is running on. Who’s paying us money right now just happens to be Web3 games, specifically because they have almost no users, and they’re trying to get more engagement and users for their games. Web3 games like Shrapnel and Off the Grid are spending a lot of money on Twitch campaigns to get more streamers to play their games and generate interest.
This is opening the door for how we’re operating as a business model. If Web2 games want to come to Soulbound to find more users, they can easily pay streamers to stream their games, and that’s what we’re building towards. Whether the game is Web2 or Web3, it’s irrelevant to us – we’re focused on creating content and engaging the audience.
Is gaming streaming as popular right now as it was 10 years ago?
Gaming streaming is actually increasing in popularity. If you look at the stream charts, you’ll see the number of hours streamed and hours viewed, which has been steadily increasing. Ninja is still streaming, mostly on YouTube, after the Twitch controversy. You can see that there have been 51 million unique viewers on Twitch this September.
It’s becoming a global phenomenon, with some of the biggest streamers now coming from Spanish-speaking countries. The industry is not just a US and European thing anymore – it’s becoming much bigger globally. There’s also a growing trend of VTubers, where streamers use anime-style digital avatars to stream instead of showing their faces.
How do you think AI will influence prediction markets and live streaming in the future?
It’s definitely going to get more interesting in the future, but it’s hard to predict exactly how. VTubing is still a relatively new trend, but it is just really taking off this year. In the future, we could see VTubers creating their own NFT collections around their personalities and identities.
These NFT traits could then give users special abilities or boosts within the platform, adding real monetary value to the traits. Whether AI is directly involved in creating these traits or just the underlying functionality, it’s hard to say. For our platform, we’re not heavily focused on AI right now, but we’re definitely open to exploring how it could enhance the experience for both streamers and viewers going forward.
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