The World Cup is emerging as a key catalyst for bringing prediction markets into the mainstream. During the tournament’s opening week, nominal sports trading volume across major prediction market platforms surpassed $7 billion, with Kalshi and Polymarket accounting for more than 98% of total market share. Driven by high-frequency events, strong emotional engagement, and an intuitive probability-based language, sports markets are accelerating the evolution of prediction markets from event speculation to probability trading. Against this backdrop, Gate Research has released a special report examining the market structure, leading platforms, AI forecasting models, and future development of World Cup prediction markets.
- Nominal sports trading volume across major prediction market platforms exceeded $7 billion during the opening week of the World Cup, with Kalshi and Polymarket serving as the primary liquidity hubs.
- Sports prediction markets have developed a three-layer structure consisting of championship markets, advancement-path markets, and single-match markets, with single-match markets generating the highest trading density and liquidity.
- Unlike traditional fixed-odds betting, prediction markets trade dynamic probabilities, allowing users to continuously buy, sell, hedge, and arbitrage positions.
- AI models provide structured pre-match probability estimates, while prediction markets generate dynamic, capital-weighted posteriors through real-money trading. The combination of the two is improving market efficiency in information discovery.
The report highlights that sports is becoming one of the most important growth engines for prediction markets. As the World Cup continues to attract users, liquidity, and attention, championship markets, advancement-path markets, and single-match markets together form a comprehensive trading ecosystem. Gate is also exploring a probability trading terminal built around event-driven markets, integrating probabilities, information, and trading into a unified interface to deliver a more complete prediction market experience.
Discover more details today: Gate Research: World Cup Ignites Prediction Markets, Sports Emerges as the Core Growth Engine
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Gate Team
June 25, 2026
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