Prediction markets hit $50B in World Cup's first month as sportsbook apps fade

Prediction market platforms cleared a combined $50 billion in monthly notional volume through the opening month of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to CoinDesk, with Kalshi, Polymarket and the new Robinhood–Susquehanna venture Rothera each posting records as traditional sportsbook apps spiked and then receded.

Kalshi posted $31 billion in June notional volume — up more than 70% from May — with sports contracts making up roughly 85% of trading, per Dune Analytics. Kalshi told CoinDesk its World Cup-specific volume reached $22.42 billion. Polymarket's geoblocked international exchange set a $10.8 billion monthly record; its separate, CFTC-regulated U.S. platform logged $3.5 billion, nearly double May. Rothera, launched in June through Robinhood's acquisition of MIAXdx, processed $2 billion and took a 7% U.S. share on debut, per Bank of America.

App data from Apptopia tells the flow story. By June 30, Kalshi's daily active users sat 36% above their June 15 level, while DraftKings fell 36%, FanDuel 41%, and BetMGM and Caesars 32% each from their tournament peaks. Kalshi and Polymarket together took 78.5% of betting-app installs across six tracked platforms through June — up from roughly 6% a year earlier. Kalshi's female user base grew 106%, reaching 33.3% of its users versus 22–23% at DraftKings and FanDuel; Kalshi attributed part of that to the reality show Love Island, Barron's reported.

Legal U.S. sportsbooks still set records — DraftKings said handle ran about five times its 2022 level — but gaming firm Eilers & Krejcik had projected only $2.8 billion to $4.3 billion across the 104 matches, a fraction of prediction-market throughput.

Key facts

• Combined prediction-market volume: ~$50 billion for the month (CoinDesk).
• Kalshi: $31 billion June notional, ~85% sports (Dune); $22.42 billion World Cup-specific (Kalshi's own figure).
• Polymarket: $10.8 billion international, $3.5 billion regulated U.S. (CoinDesk).
• Rothera: $2 billion volume, 7% U.S. share on debut (Bank of America).
• U.S.-linked wallets traded $571 million on Polymarket's global political markets over the past year, top of any country (Allium).

The real-world read

Two caveats sit under the headline. First, the biggest single numbers are self-reported by interested parties: Kalshi's $22.42 billion World Cup figure and its demographic and female-growth stats come from Kalshi itself, not an independent auditor. Treat them as claims, not confirmations. Second, "prediction markets" isn't cleanly a sports story — Kalshi and Polymarket also run political, economic and reality-TV contracts, so sports volume is inflated by adjacent markets.

The $571 million figure is the honest tell on Polymarket's much-touted U.S. "return." Its regulated U.S. app (full KYC, dollar settlement) is a different product from the global exchange, which stays geoblocked to U.S. IPs. Allium tracked wallets, not IP addresses — so that $571 million is Americans still routing around the geoblock via VPNs and crypto wallets, four years after Polymarket's $1.4 million CFTC settlement and pledge to stop serving them.

Opinion, and whose

CoinDesk argues the "feeder" thesis has failed — that Kalshi users are staying rather than migrating to sportsbooks, citing Apptopia's finding that sportsbook users increasingly sampled Kalshi while the reverse declined. That's a directional read on one month of app data, not a settled trend.

Sources

• CoinDesk (Tier 2, secondary), July 14, 2026 — primary account; cited Dune Analytics, Allium, Apptopia, Bank of America, YouGov BrandIndex, Eilers & Krejcik, Barron's and ESPN. Kalshi's World Cup and demographic figures are company-supplied.

Not financial advice. Betting and prediction-market trading carry risk of loss.