How has the World Cup Become Prediction Markets' Biggest Event Ever?
Gregory Cowles
Chief Strategy Officer, Co-Founder
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This Post is disseminated on behalf of Intellistake Technologies Corp.
Jason and I were discussing the latest prediction market figures this week when we found ourselves returning to an event Jason had written about only a few months ago.
In February, the Super Bowl helped Kalshi surpass US$1 billion in trading volume in a single day, an increase of approximately 2,700% from the previous year. At the time, it was one of the clearest indications yet that prediction markets were moving beyond elections and into mainstream entertainment.¹
Then the World Cup arrived.
“Kalshi, Polymarket, and Polymarket US have reported $44.8 billion in combined monthly volume in June, a 75% growth from May’s $25.66 billion.
Among the three, Kalshi saw the largest month-over-month increase in volume, growing 87.4% to $31.5 billion from $16.81 billion.” according to The Block2
With coindesk also reporting that “Prediction markets just crushed traditional sportsbooks in a massive $50 billion World Cup breakout”3
The Super Bowl and World Cup figures are not directly comparable. One represents a single day of trading, while the other covers activity across an entire month and multiple platforms.
But that may be precisely why the comparison is useful.
The Super Bowl showed that prediction markets could attract enormous attention around one game. The World Cup showed what happens when that model is applied to a global tournament unfolding across 39 days, 48 teams and 104 matches.
The question Jason and I kept returning to was not simply how the World Cup produced such a large number.
It was why the format worked so well for prediction markets in the first place.
One Event Versus an Entire Story
The Super Bowl is one of the largest sporting events in the world, but from a market perspective, it is relatively compressed.
There is a build-up, one game and a final result.
The World Cup is different. It creates a continuously developing story.
Each match changes the probability of what comes next. A surprise result can transform the outlook for an entire group. An injury can affect expectations around the next round. A team that enters the tournament as an outsider can become a serious contender within a matter of days.
Every result creates new information, and new information creates another reason to trade.
That helps explain why the World Cup produced something the Super Bowl could not: sustained activity across several weeks rather than one extraordinary spike around a single game.
The tournament did not offer one moment of uncertainty. It produced hundreds of them.
More Matches Created More Markets
The expanded 2026 World Cup includes 104 matches, compared with 64 at the previous tournament.
Each of those matches can support several markets, including the winner, final score, qualification outcome and potential impact on the wider tournament. Alongside individual games, participants can trade contracts linked to group winners, knockout qualification, finalists, tournament champions and individual player achievements.
That creates a fundamentally different volume opportunity from a single sporting event.
A participant who trades the Super Bowl may enter one or two positions. Someone following the World Cup can return throughout the tournament as teams progress, probabilities change and new matchups are confirmed.
The result is not simply a larger audience.
It is a larger number of reasons for that audience to keep participating.
By late June, Kalshi had reportedly recorded billions of dollars in World Cup-related trading, while Polymarket’s tournament winner market had itself generated substantial activity before the competition had even reached its final stages.⁴
With Fortune also noting that “Prediction markets are not just having a World Cup “moment.” Instead, this tournament has helped confirm their rise in the United States”4
The World Cup Is Global by Design
The Super Bowl is internationally recognized, but its commercial centre remains the United States.
The World Cup begins with a different foundation.
Countries across Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and South America participate simultaneously. Supporters enter the tournament with existing knowledge, loyalties and opinions about their national teams.
That matters because prediction markets need differences of opinion.
A market becomes more active when participants disagree about what is likely to happen and are willing to take opposing positions. The World Cup naturally creates that environment across borders, cultures and time zones.
It is also continuously active. When one region goes to sleep, another is waking up. Matches are discussed internationally, and every result is immediately interpreted through dozens of national perspectives.
For prediction markets, that global diversity is not just an audience advantage.
It is a liquidity advantage.
Familiarity Lowered the Barrier to Entry
Prediction markets have historically been associated with political elections, economic announcements and other topics that may require specialist knowledge.
Football is different.
A person does not need to understand interest-rate policy or electoral modelling to have an opinion about whether their national team will win its next match.
The subject is familiar, the outcome is clear and the contracts are easy to follow. That makes sport a natural entry point for people encountering prediction markets for the first time.
The World Cup then magnified that accessibility by bringing together an enormous global audience around the same set of outcomes.
This may be one of the most important reasons the tournament generated so much activity. Prediction markets did not have to persuade people to care about the underlying event. That demand already existed.
The platforms only had to provide a new way for people to express what they believed would happen.
FIFA appointed ADI Predictstreet as its first official partner in the prediction market category, with Predictstreet later collaborating with Kalshi as the tournament entered its knockout rounds.⁵
Prediction markets are no longer relying solely on users discovering a specialist website and deciding to participate. They are increasingly being placed alongside sports coverage, financial products and major entertainment events. The market is not only growing. Its distribution is widening.
The World Cup has clearly produced exceptional activity, while also bringing greater attention to the regulatory framework surrounding the sector. Prediction markets continue to sit at the intersection of financial derivatives and gambling regulation, and their rapid growth is likely to encourage more constructive engagement from regulators and lawmakers.
Greater clarity could ultimately support the sector’s continued development, strengthen consumer confidence and create a more stable foundation for long-term growth.
The Super Bowl and the World Cup marked two significant moments for prediction markets, each showing how major sporting events can attract substantial trading activity.
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