Prediction markets have always had a social side. Traders debate prices, share positions, and send screenshots to friends, but much of that conversation happens off the platform. Polymarket is trying to change that with Squads, a new social feature built directly into the Polymarket US app.
Launched alongside the start of football season, Squads combines group chats with prediction-market activity. Users can create groups, invite friends, share positions, and see what other members are trading without leaving Polymarket.
What Are Polymarket Squads?
A Squad is essentially a prediction-market group chat inside Polymarket. Users can create private groups around sports, markets, or just a group of friends who want to trade together.
When someone places a trade, that activity can appear inside the Squad as a card. Other members can then follow the position and trade alongside them directly from the shared activity.
Squads allow users to:
- Create groups and invite other Polymarket users
- Discuss markets directly inside the app
- Share individual positions and Combos
- Follow what other Squad members are trading
- Trade directly from positions shared with the group
Everyone still trades through their own Polymarket account. The Squad simply creates a shared layer around that individual activity.
Squads Can Be Built Around Creators, Too
The feature could extend beyond groups of friends. Polymarket's promotional material describes Squads as another tool creators can use to build communities around their trades and bring followers onto the platform.
Creators can run an open Squad where members participate in the conversation or use an admin-style setup focused on sharing their own positions. Each new trade then gives the creator something new to share with followers.
That could make Squads particularly useful for people already discussing prediction markets on X, Instagram, or other social platforms. Instead of posting a position and sending followers somewhere else to find it, creators can build a community directly around their Polymarket activity.
Polymarket Wants More Conversation Inside Its App
The idea behind Squads is fairly straightforward. Prediction-market conversations already happen in text threads, Discord servers, and social media groups, so Polymarket wants to bring more of that activity onto its own platform.
"People are constantly debating what's going to happen next with their friends and sharing predictions in group chats," Polymarket Chief Growth Officer Travis VanderZanden said. "With Squads, we're bringing the conversation and trading together."
For Polymarket, that also gives users another reason to stay inside the app after making a trade. A platform built around constantly changing events naturally produces plenty to talk about, and Squads gives those conversations a permanent home alongside the markets themselves.
Football Season Gives Squads Its First Big Test
Polymarket timed the launch around the new football season, when sports activity can give groups a steady stream of markets to discuss throughout the week. Squads also arrives alongside Polymarket HQ, the company's new football-season advertising campaign directed by Peter Berg.
The campaign includes LeBron James, Eli Manning, Derek Jeter, Spike Lee, Sue Bird, Richard Sherman and Rajon Rondo, while highlighting Squads, live trading, Combos and other Polymarket features. The timing makes football an early test of whether Squads can become more than another chat feature. If users regularly return to see what friends or creators are trading, the social layer could become an important part of how Polymarket keeps people engaged.
The Trade Handle Prediction Markets Take
Squads is interesting because Polymarket isn't inventing a new behavior. It's taking something prediction-market traders already do and trying to move it inside the product. That could make the feature useful for both retention and acquisition.
Friends have a reason to invite friends, while creators have a direct path for turning an audience into a community that follows their positions. Prediction-market platforms have spent plenty of time competing over contracts, liquidity, and pricing. Squads shows another part of that competition starting to matter: who can build the best experience around the trade itself.