Not long into his first dinner with Kalshi founder Tarek Mansour early in April, Keith Wachtel realized the depth of his fascination with the prediction contracts that the financial derivatives exchange had launched around March Madness.
As their meeting stretched deep into the men’s NCAA basketball title game, the NHL’s president of business told Mansour that there were “very few things” that could bring him to miss tipoff, never mind the bulk of the first half.
Opening the Kalshi app on his phone, Mansour showed Wachtel how the contracts worked, with prices fluctuating as Houston built a lead it later blew.
