A packed international soccer match at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

Prediction Markets Hit $50 Billion During the World Cup. Sportsbooks Count Money Differently

By Isaac • July 14, 2026 10:10 am • Comments

Prediction markets put a $50 billion number on the World Cup. Traditional sportsbooks put up a number closer to $3 billion.

That looks like a knockout until the units are checked.

Prediction-market platforms report trading volume. Sportsbooks report handle.

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Both measure activity, but they count different actions across different products.

A contract can change hands several times before a match ends. A sportsbook bet is generally counted when the customer places the stake.

The World Cup still produced a genuine breakout for Kalshi, Polymarket and a new Robinhood-linked exchange called Rothera. The cleaner conclusion is that event contracts reached mass-market scale, not that they took ten or twenty times as much fresh betting money as the sportsbooks.

CoinDesk reported that monthly prediction-market volume moved above $50 billion as the tournament drove a record June. Kalshi accounted for $31 billion in total notional volume, while Polymarket’s international exchange recorded $10.8 billion and its regulated U.S. platform logged another $3.5 billion.

Rothera added $2 billion in its debut month. The exchange is a joint venture between Robinhood and Susquehanna International Group, and Robinhood began routing selected World Cup contracts through it from the start.

Those platform totals cover more than soccer. Kalshi and Polymarket also list contracts on politics, economic data, entertainment and other events, so the market-wide $50 billion figure cannot be read as $50 billion traded on World Cup outcomes.

Kalshi told CoinDesk that its World Cup-specific markets had reached $22.42 billion by July 14. Of that amount, $7.4 billion traded in June before the group stage was finished.

That narrower figure is still huge. It also shows why the broad monthly total and the tournament-specific total belong on separate lines.

CNBC reported that Kalshi’s June notional volume rose more than 70 percent from May’s $17.9 billion. The platform cleared $1 billion of volume on each day after the World Cup began on June 11.

Polymarket’s international exchange reversed two months of declining volume with its $10.8 billion record. Its U.S. exchange nearly doubled from May, reaching more than $3.5 billion.

Rothera’s $2 billion debut gave it 7 percent of U.S. prediction-market volume, according to Bank of America. Kalshi’s open interest, the value represented by active and unsettled contracts, also moved above $1 billion.

CNBC also reported that more than $64 million had traded on Kalshi’s U.S. tournament-winner market and $122 million on Polymarket’s equivalent by July 4. One long-duration outcome can accumulate substantial turnover as the bracket and prices change.

Open interest and volume are different. Open interest shows what remains outstanding.

Volume records the trading that occurred, including positions that were opened and later closed.

CNBC disclosed that it has a commercial relationship with Kalshi involving customer acquisition and a minority investment. The figures it cited came from platform data, user-collected Dune data and Bank of America research.

The counting difference begins with the contract itself.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission explains that event contracts often use a yes-or-no structure with a fixed payout, usually $1. A 40-cent price roughly reflects a market view that the outcome has a 40 percent chance.

A trader can buy at 40 cents and sell at 55 cents before the event is resolved. Another trader can take that position, adjust it later and sell again.

Each trade adds activity even though all of the contracts still refer to the same match or tournament outcome.

The CFTC points to that ability to trade in and out as a core feature of contract liquidity. Customers can lock in gains, limit losses or change their exposure instead of waiting for the final whistle.

The exchange supplies the order book and matches participants. It does not take a side of the outcome in the way a traditional bookmaker writes a wager and manages the house’s risk.

That structure can generate a large amount of turnover from a smaller pool of capital. The turnover is real; it simply answers a different question than the amount of money customers handed to sportsbooks as stakes.

A rough industry comparison shows how wide the gap can be.

Bookies.com cited Sporttrade founder Alex Kane’s rule of thumb that $1 of sportsbook handle can correspond to about $5 of prediction-market trading volume.

The logic is straightforward. A prediction-market trader can enter a position in pieces, add to it as the price moves, then sell before settlement, allowing the same pool of capital to create several countable trades around one event.

The platform counts every transaction along the way. Bookies.com built its pre-tournament projection from Super Bowl contract activity and expected sportsbook growth, while excluding entertainment contracts such as halftime-show markets and other novelty bets from the estimate.

Its methodology also warned that some Polymarket trades came from outside the United States. That prevents the published total from serving as a clean calculation of U.S. market share or domestically regulated activity across platforms.

A five-to-one relationship would turn $50 billion of trading volume into roughly $10 billion of handle-equivalent activity. That is an illustration, not a conversion formula.

The actual ratio changes with liquidity, market-making, contract duration and how often traders rotate positions. The $50 billion total is also global, platform-wide and measured over a month, while the sportsbook estimates focus on U.S. legal wagering across the tournament.

Even after those caveats, the event-contract business grew far beyond its pre-tournament baseline. The metric correction makes the story more accurate without making the growth small.

Traditional books were having a strong World Cup too.

Sports Business Journal reported that Eilers & Krejcik projected $2.3 billion to $4.3 billion of legal U.S. sportsbook handle for the full tournament. Its most likely scenario at the time was $2.8 billion.

That would amount to roughly one quarter of expected U.S. sports betting during the same period, based on regulator reports and the publication’s estimates. Soccer had produced less than 5 percent of U.S. legal handle in the previous two years.

Sportsbook executives described the tournament as a chance to turn occasional soccer viewers into repeat customers. Operators expanded player props, parlays, promotions and national advertising to make the product feel familiar to people who normally bet on football, basketball or baseball.

The sportsbook number covers stakes accepted by state-regulated books in the United States. The prediction-market number mixes international and U.S. platforms, includes non-sports contracts and counts secondary trading.

Both groups can set records at the same time. One does not have to be shrinking for the other to post a giant number.

Distribution is now spreading beyond stand-alone prediction-market apps.

Cointelegraph reported Tuesday that Blockchain.com partnered with Polymarket to put event contracts inside its app for eligible users. Existing crypto customers can reach those markets without opening a separate prediction-market application.

The World Cup proved that the product could attract a large audience. Integrations can lower the next barrier by placing contracts inside apps that already hold customer accounts and funds.

The contracts also give users something a standard pregame bet does not: a live price that can be traded as teams advance, players get injured and the bracket changes.

That product behavior is closer to a financial market wrapped around sports. It attracts speculators, market makers and arbitrage traders alongside people who would otherwise use a sportsbook.

The next useful scorecard goes beyond gross volume.

Unique funded traders will show how broad the audience became. Open interest will show how much exposure stayed in the market.

Fees and revenue will show how much of the turnover reached the platforms’ businesses. Retention after the final will show whether the World Cup created lasting customers or a six-week spike.

World Cup-specific volume should also stay separate from political, economic and entertainment contracts. Otherwise a sports story inherits every dollar traded elsewhere on the platform.

Fifty billion dollars is a landmark for prediction markets. It is evidence of liquid, heavily traded exchanges reaching a mainstream audience during the biggest soccer event on American soil.

It is not $50 billion of fresh cash placed against sportsbooks.

The breakout survives that distinction. The scoreboard just needs the right units.

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