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Matthew Kalish

Co-Founder & Director, Draftkings

Search every verified Matthew Kalish interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Matthew Kalish, co-founder of DraftKings, stated in a May 2026 interview that he left the company in November 2024. He has since been publicly critical of the prediction market platform Kalshi, describing its marketing as "gaslighting customers" and "lying." Kalish argued that Kalshi presents itself as a platform where casual users can compete against Wall Street, but he characterized it as a "Wall Street product" that misleads consumers about its liquidity and pricing. He also recounted a personal experience of attempting to place a $10,000 bet on Kalshi and receiving a poor price, which he said prompted his criticism. In other appearances, Kalish discussed his involvement with FaZe Clan, describing it as a "talent charity" that was losing money on housing and production. He stated that the current meta for content creators favors independence over being part of an organization. Earlier, in an August 2023 interview while still at DraftKings, Kalish discussed the company's expansion into web3 and NFTs through the DraftKings Marketplace and Reignmakers fantasy sports, noting that the company's regulated status and customer trust were advantages in that space. He also advised that it was a good time to build a business with patience and a long-term intention, given reduced competition.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“The space we play in at DraftKings is so first it's regulated because we have gambling licenses and we have like both in fantasy for real money as well as sports betting, casino licenses, etc. So we have the a very high standard around like any product we operate we would want to make sure that it's sort of compliant that regulators are approving the product. So there's a lot of sometimes rules that can come into pla”

“You're not betting like the market. You're not betting against me or your friends or your peers. like you are betting against machine, a money-making machine that is nameless, faceless, and will do anything they can to make as much money as humanly possible. That is what that is.”

“The marketing and comm's practices particularly like consumer marketing is created like a strong disdain for how I look at trick and that company now and it's very hard for me to not feel that way repeatedly seeing three four times where promoting and marketing things like normal main street casual users have an edge over Wall Street and presenting it like this could be a job.”

“I'm like, what happens to your money on these exchanges? Like this isn't sports betting to me. And that was kind of the tip off point of from there forward, every single thing I looked at, I'm like, what is going on with this company?”

“I think the simplest way to put it is I would love somebody to do this calculation. How much money does Kalshi need me and people like me, regular long-term losing retail gamblers to lose on Kalshi to make that worth $22 billion? I think it's like the entire money supply of the country times four or something. And they better hope, you know, the Fed prints more money, too, because the money is astronomical. And it ca”

“I think what we're saying is Kalshi is fake as [__]. They lie about their volume to try to make it sound bigger than it is. They mislead consumers with marketing tactics that are obviously like we know, right? like you just know as a as like a person with a brain that Main Street does not have an advantage over Wall Street for example. And they also just I feel like love to hide the ball on things like for all these ”

Other executives at Draftkings

  • Jason Robins, Co-Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →