Meta Builds Arena Prediction App After Reality Labs Losses

Meta is building Arena, a points-based app that will let users forecast political outcomes, sports results and global events using a social feed, leaderboards and engagement incentives. The app is designed to launch without real-money betting and would award points for correct forecasts.

Mark Zuckerberg assigned a small team to develop Arena. The product is being built to integrate with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp so creators and groups can share forecasts and crowd views across Meta’s existing apps. Meta AI features are expected to summarize crowd sentiment and surface popular markets in feeds.

Meta’s product design favors social features and reach over cash wagers. By using points instead of money at launch, the company aims to avoid immediate legal exposure tied to regulated betting products. The points-first approach still requires moderation, identity systems and content policy work for political and sensitive topics.

The project arrives after large losses in Meta’s Reality Labs division. Reality Labs reported operating losses of $17.7 billion for 2024 and $19.2 billion for 2025, bringing cumulative losses linked to the unit to nearly $90 billion. Meta reported roughly 3.56 billion daily active users across its apps as of April.

Meta previously experimented with prediction-style products. The company launched Forecast, a points-based crowdsourced app, in 2020 and closed it in 2022. Meta has also faced regulatory scrutiny in other financial efforts, such as a digital currency project that sold its assets after policy pushback.

The prediction-market sector has existing platforms and brokerages offering event contracts and non-cash forecasting. Some combined venues reported monthly trading volumes in the tens of billions in 2026, and estimates put annual sector volume above $130 billion for that year. Brokerages and trading apps have introduced event-contract features since 2024 and 2025.

Regulators have enforced rules around event-based markets. In 2022, a platform paid a $1.4 million penalty related to offering unregistered event contracts. A firm that pursued election contracts won at the district court level in September 2024 and saw regulatory appeal dropped in May 2025. In April 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed an insider-trading complaint tied to prediction-market activity, alleging a service member traded on information about a foreign operation.

Meta’s Arena is structured as a non-monetary forecasting product at launch, with points, leaderboards and social sharing. The design reduces immediate exposure to betting regulations while creating needs for moderation, compliance infrastructure and identity verification should the company later pursue regulated, real-money contracts.