The World Cup Was Prediction Markets’ Breakthrough Sports Moment
Key Points
- Prediction markets generated activity equivalent to approximately 27% of legal U.S. sports-betting volume during the World Cup, according to an H2 Gambling Capital estimate, up from around 9% at the beginning of 2026.
- Kalshi told CNBC that it added three million users during the tournament and recorded more than $1.2 billion in trading on its World Cup winner market.
- Kalshi reportedly attracted more daily app users than DraftKings or FanDuel during the tournament, according to Apptopia data.
Prediction Markets Reach Major-Event Betting Scale
Prediction market activity surged during the 2026 World Cup, giving platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket their clearest evidence yet that they can compete for mainstream sports demand.
H2 Gambling Capital estimated that prediction markets produced activity equivalent to approximately 27% of all legal U.S. sports-betting volume tied to the tournament. That was three times the roughly 9% share estimated at the beginning of 2026, according to Bloomberg.
H2 based its calculation on publicly available prediction market data from the tournament’s first month and estimates of sportsbook activity.
Ed Birkin, managing director at H2 Gambling Capital, offered a measured assessment of the threat.
“It’s pretty clear that prediction markets have had a very good World Cup,” Birkin told Bloomberg. “I think they are less of a threat than some people make out, but they are definitely eating around the edges.”
Kalshi Added Three Million Users During the Tournament
Kalshi told CNBC that it added three million users during the World Cup. Its market on the eventual tournament winner surpassed $1.2 billion in trading volume, setting a company record for a single market, while total World Cup activity on the platform exceeded $12 billion.
The company’s growth extended beyond trading totals. Apptopia data showed Kalshi attracting more daily app users during the tournament than either DraftKings or FanDuel.
Polymarket also generated substantial World Cup activity through its international exchange and newer U.S. operation. Kalshi remained the larger of the two during the tournament, reportedly recording more than twice Polymarket’s trading volume.
The World Cup Became a Mass-Market Product Test
Kalshi, Polymarket and other platforms benefited from a format particularly suited to event trading. The expanded World Cup supplied weeks of consecutive matches, tournament-progression markets, individual awards, futures, player contracts and fast-moving prices around live results.
Instead of relying on a single championship market, exchanges could give customers new reasons to return almost every day. That made the tournament a test of user acquisition, repeat engagement and market liquidity across an entire sports calendar rather than one isolated spike.
Why This Matters
For bettors, the immediate benefit is greater competition.
Prediction markets give customers another place to compare prices and trade sports outcomes. Their exchange structure can produce attractive pricing in liquid markets because users trade against one another and the platform collects fees rather than setting a traditional house margin.
Availability is an equally important advantage. Federally regulated exchanges have offered sports contracts in jurisdictions where conventional online sports betting is unavailable or restricted, although state litigation has made that access increasingly unstable.
The competitive implications extend well beyond one tournament. Prediction markets did not merely attract people interested in politics, economics or novelty contracts and then introduce them to sports. During the World Cup, sports became the primary acquisition product.
Kalshi’s three million-user claim is particularly significant if even a meaningful portion of those customers remain active. User acquisition is one of the most expensive parts of running an online betting business. A global tournament gave Kalshi a month-long opportunity to build customer habits through daily fixtures, live prices and a steady supply of new markets.
Traditional operators still possess major advantages. DraftKings and FanDuel have established customer databases, mature betting menus, rewards programs and years of experience pricing sports risk. FanDuel also told Bloomberg that the World Cup produced the 10 largest soccer matches by handle in the company’s history, showing that sportsbooks grew alongside the exchanges.
However, licensed operators face costs that prediction markets have often avoided. Sportsbooks must secure state-by-state approval, pay gaming taxes and comply with local rules governing advertising, product design, age limits and responsible gambling. A federally regulated exchange able to serve most of the country through one framework starts with a radically different cost and distribution structure.
That creates a genuine competitive problem. Sportsbooks are being asked to compete against products that resemble their own offerings to consumers but may operate under different licensing, tax and compliance obligations.
The tournament also weakened the industry’s argument that sports-event contracts occupy a meaningfully separate consumer category. Kalshi and Polymarket may describe their products as exchanges and financial contracts, but World Cup users traded match results, tournament winners and combinations of sports outcomes in direct competition with sportsbook markets.
The legal distinction remains unresolved. State regulators will use the World Cup’s scale to argue that excluding one side of that transaction from gambling regulation produces an uneven market and leaves consumer protections dependent on which app the bettor opens.
What Happens Next
The first test is whether World Cup users remain active once the tournament is gone. Kalshi’s ability to carry those customers into the NFL season and other major events will show whether the surge created durable growth or tournament-specific traffic.
Sportsbooks will continue developing competing prediction products while supporting efforts to impose equivalent rules on sports-event contracts. State and federal courts will meanwhile determine where those contracts can legally be offered and which regulator has authority over them.
The next major sports window will reveal whether the World Cup was an exceptional spike. The regulatory cases will decide whether prediction markets are allowed to repeat it nationwide.
Cole cut his teeth as a sportswriter in Texas, covering everything from Longhorns games to small-town Friday night lights. A lifelong bettor stuck with offshore books for over a decade thanks to Texas' slow path to legalization, he eventually found his way into the world of social sportsbooks - where he uncovered a fast-growing, community of bettors.
Today, he writes for the millions of Americans in states without legal books, helping them explore safe ways to bet without running afoul of the law.
As editor-in-chief, he aims to keep BettingScanner honest, human, and grounded in what bettors actually care about: fairness, fun, and finding your lane - even when the state won’t give you one.
