Author: Zen, PANews

In recent years, prediction market platforms, primarily represented by Polymarket and Kalshi, have turned political, macroeconomic, cryptocurrency, entertainment, and sports events into tradable markets, allowing users to express probability judgments and earn profits by buying and selling event outcomes. Especially after entering the sports sector, these platforms have seen substantial and continuous growth in trading volumes, becoming a pillar in their revenue structures.

This year, a significant year for sports, particularly with the 2026 World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, expanding to 48 teams for the first time, will serve as the most significant public stress test faced by the sports prediction market to date. It compresses sports competition, cross-border event organization, gaming ecology, and global user traffic into the same market scenario, significantly amplifying both risk dimensions and external attention.

In such a high-density, globalized, and cross-jurisdictional sports event, if insiders combine with tradable prediction markets, any information disparity concerning injuries, starting players, referees, or even internal governance could quickly be transformed into pricing advantages.

In this sense, the 2026 World Cup is not only an opportunity for prediction markets to compete for sports traffic but also a public examination of whether they can uphold the integrity of sports.

From obscurity to the World Cup forefront, FIFA's prediction market partner faces multiple doubts

In April of this year, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) announced its official prediction market partner for the 2026 World Cup. Surprising to many, the brand announced was neither Polymarket nor Kalshi, but a little-known platform—ADI Predictstreet.

As people were perplexed about who ADI Predictstreet was, this company, placed in the spotlight by the world's largest sporting event, began to face scrutiny due to issues such as negative historical records of its executives, the speed of license issuance, and the immaturity of its products.

The first controversy surrounding Predictstreet is the integrity of its executives. When ADI Predictstreet was announced as FIFA's wagering partner, Ajay Bhatia, a council member representing the company, took the stage. He posed for photos with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, both lifting a jersey with the ADI Predictstreet logo printed on the back.

Bhatia is the CEO and Managing Director of QuantLase Lab, a subsidiary of the International Holding Company (IHC), headed by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family and the Vice President of the UAE. On the other hand, ADI Predictstreet belongs to Finstreet, which is a subsidiary of Sirius International Holding, also under IHC.

According to a report by the Norwegian football news outlet Josimarreport, Bhatia became embroiled in a insider trading scandal in 2025. He was accused of buying shares in the Adani Group before IHC publicly announced its investment in the Indian energy giant. The case reached a settlement in September 2025 for around $150,000, with Bhatia not admitting any guilt.

Shortly after Josimar disclosed Bhatia's past, ADI Predictstreet announced that Dimitrios Psarrakis would be appointed as CEO. However, there seem to be questionable aspects regarding Psarrakis's resume as well. He previously served as an assistant to former European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili, who is a central figure in the Qatar corruption scandal involving the European Parliament (also known as Qatar-gate).

Kaili accepted bribes from Qatar and Morocco in exchange for lobbying for these countries within the EU. Although one cannot directly equate Kaili's legal and ethical risks to Psarrakis, the professional association with a scandal's central figure is enough to raise questions about reputation and due diligence.

In addition to executive credibility issues, the speed at which ADI Predictstreet, claiming to be the first officially approved European prediction market, received its license is also noteworthy. Just days before being announced as the official prediction market partner for the 2026 World Cup, ADI Predictstreet announced it had received a license in Gibraltar. Officials described its approval speed as “record-breaking,” and the entire process as very rigorous.

However, although ADI Predictstreet's website domain was registered as early as January this year and the license was obtained by the end of March, its official product has yet to launch, leaving the nature of the real-money trading experience unknown. As the official prediction market platform pushed to the forefront of the World Cup by FIFA, the outside world remains unable to judge whether its actual trading facilitation, settlement, risk control, anti-manipulation, and user protection mechanisms have undergone stress tests.

Therefore, under the accumulation of multiple uncertainties, the collaboration between the World Cup and ADI Predictstreet has carried an inherent trust deficit from the start.

FIFA's historical burden and gaming controversy

In addition to the doubt cast on ADI Predictstreet's platform credibility, the criticized corruption at FIFA also makes it hard for it to gain “inherent trust” in this matter.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice brought large-scale corruption charges against several FIFA officials and sports marketing executives. Then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch described the related corruption as “broad, systemic, and deep-rooted.” This historical context makes it difficult for FIFA to convince the public solely with official statements in any collaboration involving gaming, data, or prediction markets.

In recent years, FIFA's connections with the gaming and data industries have deepened, causing public concerns for event integrity to grow at an equal pace.

Shortly before the 2022 Qatar World Cup, FIFA reached an agreement with gaming operator Betano; the following year, FIFA signed a deal with New Zealand's lottery company TAB for the Women's World Cup; at the beginning of 2026, FIFA commercialized its streaming platform FIFA+ through an agreement with data company Stats Perform, thus bringing more lower-tier matches into the gaming market.

From a commercial perspective, this can be interpreted as FIFA's development of data assets and fan interaction. But from the perspective of sports integrity, it also means that the World Cup is being more deeply embedded into gaming and trading ecology. And when events become increasingly enamored with the commercial value brought by gaming and trading ecologies, whether they can still independently control risks is marked with a big question mark.

In response, FIFA has also taken some measures against the threats related to gaming. In 2024, FIFA relocated its legal department and integrity team to Miami (leading to the loss of many experienced employees), and it has also established an integrity task force, with members including the International Criminal Police Organization, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and representatives from the gaming industry.

In February 2026, FIFA announced that U.S.-based integrity and compliance monitoring company IC360 would join the task force and use its ProhiBet software to monitor threats related to gaming, including whether players and match officials are betting on their own matches.

However, this mechanism resembles a screening tool for legitimate markets rather than a complete defensive line covering the global gaming and prediction market risks of the World Cup. For an event with participants spread across the globe and extensive information chains, truly dangerous insider trading often does not happen in the most easily visible places for regulation.

Concerns over insider trading rise, leading prediction market leaders tighten rules

Traditional gaming monitoring usually relies on information sharing among bookmakers, data providers, leagues, and regulatory agencies. However, prediction markets may involve crypto wallets, offshore platforms, cross-border accounts, proxy trading, and decentralized settlements. Even if the official cooperative platform is regulated, other platforms may bypass FIFA's official system to open World Cup markets.

If unusual transactions occur on non-cooperative platforms, between non-U.S. users, crypto wallets, or proxy accounts, whether FIFA's traditional integrity tools can penetrate is an unproven question.

In sports prediction markets, the risks of insider manipulation regarding World Cup champions, group progressions, or specific teams advancing are usually low, making it hard for a single participant to manipulate.

However, the smaller and more micro-oriented markets are completely different. Whether a player starts, whether a player is injured, whether there is a red card in a match, whether a team receives a penalty, whether a particular referee officiates, whether there is a VAR controversy in a match—these events are more susceptible to influence by a few insiders and are more likely to be priced in advance due to unpublished information.

As the sole regulator of prediction markets, the CFTC in the U.S. has also recognized this early on. One of its guidance points regarding sports prediction markets emphasizes the importance for regulated exchanges to pay attention to contracts related to individual player performance, prop bets, and micro markets that are easy to manipulate. The CFTC also encourages platforms to share data with sports leagues and strengthen contract settlement and market monitoring.

In response, prediction market platforms in the U.S. are already managing accordingly. After Kalshi and Polymarket pushed for legislative restrictions on prediction markets in Congress, they quickly updated their rules; Kalshi stated it would prohibit sports-related personnel from trading contracts related to their areas of involvement or employment, while Polymarket also updated its rules to prohibit users from trading related contracts when possessing confidential information or being able to influence event outcomes.

However, the complexity of the World Cup far exceeds that of a single professional league in the U.S. The NBA and MLB have clear systems for leagues, teams, player unions, referees, and official data. The World Cup, on the other hand, involves FIFA, six continental football associations, 48 national teams, clubs, agents, medical teams, referee committees, broadcasters, and data suppliers—a vast array of groups. Who qualifies as an “insider,” how to identify them, and whether they can trade through relatives, friends, proxy wallets, or third-party accounts are all issues that are more difficult to resolve in the context of the World Cup.

Moreover, prediction markets face not only integrity issues in sports but also global regulatory legitimacy challenges. In April of this year, the Brazilian government blocked 27 prediction market platforms and tightened derivative rules, prohibiting the use of sports, online games, politics, elections, cultural, and social outcomes as derivative subjects. There are also dozens of countries that do not accept the notion that “event contracts are not gambling.”

In such a situation, FIFA's choice of a platform laden with doubts and products not yet fully verified as the official prediction market partner for the World Cup inherently pushes the issue of sports integrity to the forefront.

Of course, the 2026 World Cup will not determine the survival of prediction markets, but it could very likely establish the boundaries for the mainstreaming of prediction markets within the global sports industry: will it be a regulatory event trading infrastructure, or another entry point for gambling risks amplified by global sports traffic.

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