The prediction market platform Polymarket has announced the launch of a social feature called Squads within its U.S. app, integrating group chats, opinion sharing, and order placement into a single interface, aimed at retaining users before the American football season.

Features include: creating private groups and inviting friends; discussing events, markets, and predictions within the app; sharing positions and combinations with the squad; viewing contracts being traded by other members; and placing follow orders directly from shared positions or combinations. Each person still transacts independently through their own Polymarket account, with funds and profits/losses not combined.

Growth officer Travis VanderZanden stated that users are already debating the next big thing and sharing predictions in external group chats, and Squads aims to consolidate "talking" and "betting" in one place. The company describes it as moving existing group chat behaviors onto the platform rather than creating a separate community product.

The launch is tied to the brand campaign "Polymarket HQ": directed by Peter Berg, featuring sports and cultural figures like LeBron James, Eli Manning, Derek Jeter, and Spike Lee, aimed at attracting new users to U.S. sports betting. Previously, the Washington D.C. "Situation Room" pop-up store had weak customer acquisition, and the social layer is seen as the next round of support.

In terms of product sequence, Squads follows Polymarket Perps: the latter has expanded trading from event outcomes to price fluctuations in cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities, and indices. The U.S. version claims to operate legally in all fifty states and is expanding under a regulated framework; social visibility of positions means that information previously scattered across third-party follow tools is now centralized officially.

Mechanically, this drives customer acquisition and transaction frequency, rather than being a new pricing engine. The platform reclaims the discussion space, shortening the path from casual chat to order placement, benefiting from fees and market depth; external Telegram and Discord group owners and gray follow tools are under pressure. The celebrity campaign buys attention, while Squads buys repeat purchases: seeing friends' positions amplifies herd behavior and can also magnify losses during misjudgments. Funds remain circulating within individual accounts, with the real transfer being the right to distribute information.

Source: Public Information