Night Queen

How to play Night Queen

If the research firm’s $190 billion taker volume estimate proves accurate, it’d represent a more than eightfold increase from the $22 billion taker turnover seen last year.

Potentially boding well for the Macquarie forecast are at least two factors. First, there are signs of turnover increases across a variety of yes/no exchanges. Second, volume surged to start September with those spikes arriving even before the NFL season kicked off.

As Macquarie analyst Chad Beynon points out, prediction markets generated $4.3 billion in taker volume during the first week of September without any help from the NFL, building on momentum from the 2026 World Cup. However, the NFL’s impact was immediate, with taker volume hitting a daily record during Week 1 of the campaign.

What is Night Queen?

The 2026 NFL season arguably marks the most contentious battle to attract customers interested in sports betting and predictions, dating back to the historic PASPA decision. For the first full NFL season, traditional sportsbooks such as DraftKings will offer sports-event contracts in the three most populous US states – California, Texas and Florida.

Unlike regulated sportsbooks, prediction markets allow customers between the ages of 18 and 21 to trade on sports-event contracts. Craig Carton, a sports talk host with WFAN 660 AM in New York, criticised the athletes for their endorsement of Polymarket. Carton, a recovering compulsive gambler, opined that the “unregulated” gambling markets are driving Americans into bankruptcy and kids out of school. Regulated books prohibit those under 21 from betting on their platform, leading Carton to question the celebrities for promoting the company.

“At what point does someone come along where you say no to the offer?” Carton asked.

What is Night Queen?

“The bottleneck becomes the person reviewing everything. That does not mean we never review the code itself. For sensitive or critical parts of the system, we still look more closely at the implementation, particularly from an architecture, performance, security and reliability perspective. But we no longer apply that level of manual code review to everything.” Grenstad says.

The shift to AI is also changing how Grenstad thinks about recruitment. A team working on the player journey, for example, needs people who understand casinos, iGaming and what a strong player experience should look like.

“I would not necessarily prioritise senior Java or front-end specialists in the same way as before,” Grenstad explains. “Technical skills remain important, particularly for people who can assess architecture and ensure systems remain reliable, but domain knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable. I’d rather take someone who’s good in the domain but doesn’t know any Java.”