Kalshi cashes in with US$27 billion World Cup windfall, but illegal betting fears remain
Prediction market start-up lets people wager on the outcome of events such as sport and elections and has gained popularity since 2024
Prediction market start-up Kalshi scored well during the 2026 Fifa World Cup, netting roughly double its projected user traffic and trading volume as fans scrambled to turn their football savvy into profits.
Kalshi recorded US$27 billion in trading volume and saw about three million users during the length of the tournament, a source familiar with the matter said. The competition ran its expanded 48-team format this year and became the most lucrative in Fifa’s history.
The source said the start-up had expected US$13 billion in volume and about 1.5 million users during the tournament, which opened at Azteca Stadium in Mexico and ended in New Jersey, where Spain beat Lionel Messi’s defending champions Argentina to lift the trophy for a second time.
Prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket let people wager on the outcome of events such as sport and elections and have gained popularity since the 2024 presidential election.
The tournament numbers catapult Kalshi into a wider genre of event contracts, even though it has been in a tussle with regulatory bodies across states over gambling laws.
Kalshi will start taking bets on the outcomes of clinical trials and FDA regulatory reviews, it said earlier in the month, making drug-development odds public for the first time.