Argentina and Spain are well on their way after dominant performances at the World Cup and are moving ever closer to the knockout stages of the tournament. But prediction market firms like Kalshi and Polymarket are equally celebrating. Just 11 days into the tournament and with a month left, this emerging sector of the betting industry is enabling users Betting on sports and a variety of other real-world events has already generated billions of dollars in bets.
In order to assess the extent of the impact, Assets collected data from leading prediction markets (as of Thursday). Kalshi saw the biggest increase: the platform reports that World Cup trading volume has reached $2.9 billion, including parlay bets, and continues to rise. That figure already surpasses other major sporting events, including March Madness, where the company brought in $2.51 billion, and this season’s Champions League, where bets totaled $685 million.
Polymarket, a key competitor of Kalshi in this space, has reported similarly strong activity. According to a person familiar with the company, Polymarket’s World Cup betting has generated $2.5 billion in cumulative trading volume since launching last July, making Polymarket one of the largest single markets in the platform’s history. During the same period, football-related trading on its global decentralized finance platform surpassed $5 billion.
RobinhoodFor his part, reported the activity of the World Cup prediction market, citing the volume of contracts. A spokesman said this Assets that Rothera, a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse operated through the platform’s joint venture with Susquehanna International Group, has executed more than 500 million contracts since the start of the month, including 400 million since June 11, the opening day of the tournament.
The prediction markets are not just experiencing a World Cup “moment”. Instead, this tournament served as confirmation their rise in the United Stateswhere they are increasingly being used as an easily accessible way to bet on almost anything. These platforms allow users to trade small dollar positions with real results via their phones. For many fans, supporting a team or scenario in a market is now the standard method of participating in major events, alongside traditional sports betting and fantasy leagues.
Given the size of these markets and the unpredictability of football, single bets can be either very profitable or very costly.
Windfalls and wipeouts
Many of the World Cup games so far have taken unexpected turns. Spain, one of the tournament favorites, drew 0-0 against Cabo Verde in the first leg last Monday. Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal also recorded a surprise draw against Congo, a team widely viewed as a comfortable win on paper.
In such an unpredictable environment, putting their money at risk can result in either significant profits or significant losses for bettors. Since the start of the World Cup, both results have already prevailed.
In the Portugal-Congo game, a Polymarket user with the username “BreakTheBank” almost $300,000 was used that Portugal would not win and recorded a profit of almost $1 million at the end of the game. In another case, a newly created wallet placed an amount of $4 million They bet on the same platform that Spain would not beat Cabo Verde and walked away with around $9 million, raising public questions about whether the trading reflected luck or access to nonpublic information.
This type of trading has increased concerns Insider activity on forecasting platforms. Some countries have moved to ban or block certain markets entirely, and in the United States, the rapid growth of event contracts has led to an ongoing dispute between federal regulators and state authorities over whether these products are more akin to financial instruments or unlicensed gambling.