Insurer Places $3 Million Kalshi Hedge on LSU Title Run, Matching Kiffin Bonus

Q: Who was the mysterious private counterparty willing to risk millions against LSU's championship run in an off-market prediction trade?

It has not been publicly identified. Kalshi and CBS Sports both said the LSU hedge was executed with an unnamed private counterparty, and Kalshi declined to name the firm. The strongest reporting points to a market-making or institutional trading firm rather than Kalshi itself. Kalshi said it does not take positions and only matches buyers and sellers. InGame reported that Susquehanna International Group, a prominent counterparty in other sports-related Kalshi block trades, was not the LSU market maker. It added that Jump Trading is the only other market maker publicly known to have provided liquidity for similar block trades, but there is no confirmation that Jump was the LSU counterparty. There is also confusion between the insurer that placed the hedge and the party that took the other side. Game Point Capital is widely cited as a sports-insurance firm known to use Kalshi for these hedges, and multiple reports suggest it may have been involved on the insurance side. But that would describe the hedger, not the mystery counterparty willing to absorb the LSU title risk. So the direct answer is that the private counterparty remains unknown. The best available evidence suggests it was an institutional liquidity provider or market maker arranged off-exchange, but no outlet or company has definitively identified who it was.

1 articles · Updated · CBS Sports · Sep 1

$662,050 bought five Kalshi positions that would pay up to $3 million if LSU wins the national title, a structure matching coach Lane Kiffin's playoff bonus ladder.
Kalshi said the buyer was a third-party insurance company, not LSU, using the federally licensed prediction market to offset risk that schools typically reinsure through insurers such as Lloyd's of London.
837,500 contracts on LSU making the College Football Playoff accounted for nearly all volume in that market on Aug. 13, and the largest leg was arranged off-exchange because public liquidity could not absorb it.
Similar South Carolina-linked trades cost $41,300 for as much as $230,000 in payouts, though the school said it has no such insurance arrangement and knows of no trading-market hedge.
The trades highlight a growing use of prediction markets in sports insurance even as the NCAA has urged tighter limits on college sports contracts and Kalshi fights restrictions in multiple states.