Mr Thimble

What is Mr Thimble?

Can anyone emulate the Red Devils this year? Let’s look into our crystal ball and find out!

Arsenal vs. Benfica (Agg 1-1) (5.55pm GMT kick-off)

Last week’s first leg between these two sides was a frustrating one for both teams. Benfica will feel disappointed not to have taken advantage of Arsenal’s wasteful nature in front of goal, while The Gunners will be kicking themselves not to have sealed the tie at the first time of asking.

How to play Mr Thimble

Some exchange operators already filed plans to introduce KPI-linked event contracts. Those derivatives would be tied to metrics such as corporate earnings or, in more nuanced cases, Apple iPhone shipments or Tesla deliveries — just two examples — in a given quarter.

While sports event contracts remain the headline-grabbers for prediction market operators, there’s evidence that other categories are experiencing growth. As Bernstein points out, cryptocurrency event contracts account for at least 20% of the turnover on the two largest prediction markets.

In another encouraging non-sports sign, one of those operators notched just $2 million in commodities volume last year, but that figure surpassed $410 million in August alone and is approaching $600 million on a year-to-date basis.

What is Mr Thimble?

Dutch MPs have raised similar concerns before. In December 2025, CDA MP Straatman asked the state secretary whether websites advertising as “Beste casino’s zonder Cruks” should be taken offline immediately. 

In a written response published in January 2026, Arno Rutte, the state secretary at the time acknowledged that enforcement against such sites remained limited, particularly for domains not registered under the .nl extension.

According to KVA, KT van Bruggen, the current state secretary for Justice and Security, has pointed out the urgency of implementing effective countermeasures to limit access to such illegal platforms.