Prediction Markets Stole a Quarter of the World Cup’s Betting Pot

Key Points

• Prediction markets claimed roughly 27% of all legal US sports-betting volume during the World Cup, tripling their market share from 9% in January, according to H2 Gambling Capital estimates.
• Kalshi surpassed both DraftKings and FanDuel in daily mobile app users during the tournament, while its “FIFA World Cup Winner” market alone generated over $1.2 billion in trading volume.
• DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment (FanDuel’s parent) are both down more than 25% on the year, even as sportsbooks reported record World Cup handle figures of their own.

Kalshi Breaks Its Own Records, Then Breaks Them Again

Thirty-eight days of football. The prediction markets have been responsible for around 27 percent of the total volume of all legal betting on US sports-betting events during the World Cup, based on estimates made by H2 Gambling Capital. This figure, published by Bloomberg on 19th July 2026, had one condition: the measurement of betting volumes is done differently by the prediction markets and the sportsbooks, and none of the top books have come out with their full tournament numbers yet.

Kalshi, the largest platform in the space, did not just grow during the tournament. It kept rewriting its own benchmarks. Trading volumes doubled the previous peak it had set during the New York Knicks’ playoff run, just one week before the World Cup began, and reached nearly ten times the levels recorded at various points in early 2026. By 14 July, the platform’s “FIFA World Cup Winner” market alone had crossed $1.2 billion in trading volume, the largest single market in its history. The company says the tournament brought in around three million new users.

One figure stood out above all others. Kalshi recorded more daily active users on its mobile app than either DraftKings or FanDuel during the World Cup, per data from Apptopia. That comparison would have sounded far-fetched eighteen months ago. Less than two years before the tournament, prediction markets were still barred from offering any wagers on sporting events. Gambling executives who should have been paying closer attention were publicly dismissing the platforms as regulatory outliers with limited upside.

How Kalshi Won the Crowd Before the Final Whistle?

Part of what made this tournament different was the scale of Kalshi’s marketing operation. The company struck a late sponsorship deal to place its branding on the digital pitchside boards during the latter stages of the World Cup, every match, every stadium, round after round. That was not the kind of visibility that prediction markets had historically commanded around major sports events. It was the kind of presence that DraftKings and FanDuel had built their empires on. Kalshi took it.

Beyond the stadium boards, the platform’s campaigns ran across digital boards, a co-branding deal with ADI Predictstreet, and an integration with ChatGPT that surfaced Kalshi’s odds directly inside AI-powered World Cup searches. Endorsement deals with Luka Modric, José Mourinho, and Argentina’s national squad put the brand in front of audiences that had never heard of a prediction market. Allan Maman, Kalshi’s chief marketing officer, told Fortune that the company badly underestimated the tournament’s pull within the first 72 to 96 hours of the opening matches, and shifted its entire strategy to go all-in on the World Cup from that point forward.

The pricing numbers explained much of the user pull. According to a survey by Citizens JMP Securities assessing the implied vig in terms of game results and number of goals for six providers, Polymarket had the lowest average vig of 2.70%, while Kalshi had an average vig of 4.71%. The other platforms included DraftKings with an average vig of 4.97%, FanDuel with 5.07%, BetMGM with 5.64%, and Fanatics with 6.14%. This was the second major event where Kalshi and Polymarket outpaced the market leaders in pricing after March Madness.

Sportsbooks Under Pressure, but Not Out

Ian Moore, an analyst at Bernstein, was direct about what all of this means for the incumbent operators. The growth, he said, has “put feet to the fire for these traditional sportsbooks to start offering a similar service.” He called the situation “a new opportunity for everyone,” though the stock performance of the major players told a more sobering story. Both DraftKings Inc. and Flutter Entertainment (FanDuel’s parent company) surged in anticipation of World Cup-driven revenue, then fell back as the tournament progressed and are down more than 25% on the year. DraftKings declined to comment. FanDuel’s parent company noted it could not address broad market trends while preparing to release financial results, but said the World Cup had produced “record interest from our customers throughout the competition, with the top 10 soccer games by handle in our history all coming during this year’s tournament.”

Ed Birkin, managing director at H2 Gambling Capital, offered a more measured read. “It’s pretty clear that prediction markets have had a very good World Cup,” he said. “I think they are less of a threat than some people make out, but they are definitely eating around the edges, and these customers will allow them to continue growing their business.” His broader point was that the two audiences are not yet the same: prediction market users skew toward a different demographic, possibly less lucrative per head than the core sportsbook bettor. FanDuel’s own stand-alone prediction market product, launched as a competitive response, has so far gained little traction according to Apptopia data.

Still, the structural edge that prediction markets hold is not going away. Because platforms like Kalshi operate under the federal jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than state gaming boards, they can serve users in California, Texas, Florida, and dozens of other states where conventional sports betting remains illegal. They also accept anyone aged 18 and over, while sportsbooks are restricted to those 21 and above. That regulatory gap, combined with lower fees and no practice of restricting winning customers, has created a product that Birkin called “a headwind for the sportsbooks.”

Polymarket Falls Behind, Rothera Arrives

The World Cup also reshuffled the standings within the prediction market sector itself. Polymarket, which was once the undisputed dominant force in the industry, has been dealing with legal delays, internal disruption, and a difficult road to launching its US-facing platform. User-compiled data on Dune Analytics shows Kalshi generated more than twice Polymarket’s trading volume during the tournament, a gap that would have seemed unlikely a year ago when Polymarket still held the industry’s top position.

Polymarket did grow during the tournament across both its international exchange and its newer US operation. But the wider competitive picture shifted beneath it. A third major player entered the race: Rothera, a new prediction market platform jointly backed by Robinhood Markets and Susquehanna International Group, which launched World Cup contracts in June and rapidly attracted significant volume. Rothera’s weekly trading figures reportedly jumped from around $1.67 million to $639 million after Robinhood began routing wagers to the exchange in late May, and the platform had already taken a 7% share of the US prediction market by the end of its debut month.

France, for its part, took a harder line than any of that commercial momentum anticipated. The French gambling regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux, ordered internet providers to block Polymarket entirely after French visits to the platform reportedly hit 578,751 in a single month, despite a transaction ban the regulator had put in place in 2024. Germany, Italy, and Spain have also restricted prediction market access. Brazil shut down 27 prediction platforms in April, including Kalshi, leaving the company in an awkward position shortly after it had launched operations in the country. The pattern suggests that whatever commercial success the platforms achieved on a US-hosted World Cup, governments are drawing harder lines on market access everywhere else.

What Comes After the Final Whistle?

The same uncertainty that followed the Super Bowl in early 2026 is circling the industry again. Trading volumes across all exchanges dipped as the tournament’s final matches approached and the post-tournament calendar looked thinner. Kalshi bounced back quickly after the Super Bowl, drawing on a portfolio of event markets that spans elections, weather contracts, and economic indicators, not just sport. Ed Birkin noted this breadth, acknowledging that while the comparison to traditional sportsbooks remains imprecise, the ability to offer contracts on events that go beyond the sports calendar gives prediction markets a structural resilience that seasonal betting operators lack.

Kalshi itself faces active legal disputes even as it extends its commercial reach. Kentucky has sued the company over allegations of unlicensed sports betting. The CFTC, usually the platform’s protector rather than its adversary, is moving to restrict certain contract types covering player injuries, officiating decisions, and other “discrete-action” outcomes, even while continuing to defend game-result contracts in court. The recent suspension by Kalshi of its flight cancellation market is an indicator that the edges of the product are still under active negotiations.

It remains to be seen if the 27% ownership figure will still hold true once all the legal and regulatory issues are sorted out, especially now that the three million users gained from the competition become inactive in the absence of globally fascinating competitions.

Expert Analysis

The figures surrounding the World Cup reveal one thing that sportsbook operators have found hard to openly acknowledge about prediction markets: the rivalry they pose is not just an issue of regulation anymore, but a significant trend. A product which didn’t even exist in its current incarnation two years ago was used more often each day than DraftKings or FanDuel ever was in the most watched football tournament on American soil.

The pricing data from Citizens JMP Securities matters beyond the headline comparison. When Polymarket charges a 2.70% implied margin, and Fanatics charges 6.14% on the same match outcome, sophisticated bettors notice. The analysts Jordan Bender and Isabella Slavin suggested this gap should widen further as liquidity deepens and market makers become more competitive. If they are correct, the pricing advantage compounds over time, and the sportsbooks face a structural cost disadvantage that marketing and distribution alone cannot fix.

What the quarter-share figure also obscures is the direction of user flow. According to data reviewed by the Action Network, sportsbook users were increasingly sampling Kalshi during the tournament, while the reverse was not holding: Kalshi users were not migrating to sportsbook apps. The theory that prediction markets would serve as a top-of-funnel entry point into traditional sports betting has not materialised. The users who arrived are staying where they landed. That is the harder problem for the incumbents, one that no amount of late-entry prediction market products will fully resolve.