Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author | Asher ( @Asher_ 0210 )
After the 2026 World Cup kicks off, the prediction market quickly becomes the hottest topic in the crypto industry.
On one hand, the World Cup itself has the largest sports traffic in the world; on the other hand, the prediction market, which has developed rapidly over the past two years, finally welcomes the stage that suits it best. The outcomes of matches, qualification situations, champion determinations, and golden boot races — almost every topic can be transformed into a tradable market.
The heat quickly reflects in the data. In the first week of the World Cup, the nominal trading volume of the prediction market reached 7.18 billion dollars, setting a new historical high, and it may only be a matter of time before the single-week sports trading volume exceeds 10 billion dollars. Among this wave of World Cup enthusiasm, Polymarket, Kalshi, and predict.fun become the three most关注ed prediction platforms.
Polymarket’s moat is higher than expected
The World Cup's impact on Polymarket is most intuitively reflected in its revenue. According to DefiLlama data, yesterday Polymarket's 24-hour revenue reached 1.18 million dollars, surpassing Hyperliquid's 814,900 dollars.
Polymarket's 24-hour revenue surpasses Hyperliquid
Polymarket did not attract users to participate in World Cup-related predictions by "printing money." During the World Cup, the platform only launched a 1 million dollar liquidity reward program, focusing on enhancing market depth rather than directly stimulating user trading with a high reward pool.
From the perspective of market depth, since the World Cup started, Polymarket has accumulated over 1.7 billion dollars in trades related to World Cup events, with over 63 million dollars in trades in the past 24 hours. Additionally, Polymarket has continuously expanded its sports collaborations around the World Cup, connecting with football-related channels and event resources such as OneFootball and Liga MX, further embedding the prediction market into fan content scenarios.
This also indicates that Polymarket’s moat may be higher than outsiders imagine. When a global event like the World Cup arrives, the first reaction of on-chain users participating in related predictions is to go to Polymarket. Polymarket’s advantage lies not just in having betting options but in having become the default choice for on-chain users participating in various event predictions.
Kalshi benefits from compliance and sports advantages
If Polymarket is more like the first stop for on-chain users participating in World Cup predictions, then Kalshi’s advantage comes from the expansion of sports trading under the US compliance framework.
Before the World Cup kicks off, the CFTC released clearer regulatory signals regarding event contracts. From the content of the proposals, the signals released by the CFTC are relatively positive — most prediction events surrounding the overall outcome of sports competitions may still gain relatively clear compliance space. The CFTC initially believes that markets centered around overall match outcomes, such as win/loss, scores, point differentials, qualification results, overall data of teams or players, and seasonal performance, may still be regarded as event contracts with price discovery functions and informational value. The markets that are more likely to attract regulatory focus are those surrounding player injuries, referee decisions, individual actions, which are more prone to manipulation, insider trading, or incentive distortions.
This is very crucial for Kalshi. Kalshi is itself a platform under CFTC regulation, and sports is one of its most important sources of trading volume. Analysis by Pew Research shows that since July 2024, sports trading accounts for about 80% of Kalshi's total trading volume. In other words, as long as the sports prediction market gains clearer space within the compliance framework, Kalshi will be one of the most direct beneficiaries.
Data from this World Cup has also confirmed this point. As the events began, Kalshi's sports trading volume increased significantly, with single-day nominal trading volume reaching 1.09 billion dollars, exceeding 1 billion dollars for two consecutive days. In comparison, Polymarket's nominal sports trading volume during the same period was 350 million dollars. This means that in this concentrated window of sports trading during the World Cup, Kalshi's single-day volume has opened a significant gap.
Kalshi's sports trading volume exceeds 1 billion dollars for two consecutive days
Thus, Kalshi benefits not only from the World Cup but also from compliance advantages. The World Cup has pushed the sports prediction market to the forefront, while the CFTC's regulatory discussions provide Kalshi with clearer narrative space. While Polymarket represents the mindset of on-chain prediction markets, Kalshi is proving that compliant sports prediction markets can also achieve extremely high trading intensity.
predict.fun’s variable is the Binance entry
Unlike Polymarket and Kalshi, the biggest highlight of predict.fun this World Cup is firstly its frequent connections with the Binance ecosystem, and secondly its use of the largest cash prize pool for the World Cup among current prediction market platforms to further amplify activity heat.
During the World Cup, predict.fun launched the 2026 World Cup prediction activity "Predict Cup," with a total prize pool of 2 million dollars, which is currently the largest World Cup-specific reward among major prediction market platforms. In contrast to the 1 million dollar activities of Polymarket and Kalshi, predict.fun has clearly increased the incentive strength significantly.
From the perspective of activity design, predict.fun is not just making a single champion prediction but turning the World Cup into a continuous points competition lasting 39 days. The activity covers 48 teams and 104 matches, and users can support up to 5 teams, accumulating Fan Points by participating in predicting match outcomes, scores, goals scored, etc., and sharing rewards according to stage leaderboards.
Rewards are also integrated throughout the tournament. Each group in the group stage is set with a 70,000 dollar prize pool, and each stage in the knockout phase also has its respective rewards, with the final pool reaching 260,000 dollars. This means that users are not just betting on one result but can continuously participate around the teams they support.
predict.fun launches the 2026 World Cup prediction activity, total prize pool reaches 2 million dollars
More importantly, this activity is integrated with the Binance entry.
According to the official announcement, the Binance wallet supports users to participate in the 2 million dollar PREDICT CUP activity provided and operated by predict.fun through the Binance App interface. Users can select supporting teams within the Binance App and participate in relevant prediction markets, earning Fan Points under the rules to enhance team rankings. Additionally, qualified users participating in relevant markets through the Binance prediction market during the activity period can share an extra 3 million Predict Points reward.
The World Cup provides event heat, Binance provides entry traffic, the 2 million dollar prize pool and 3 million points reward further lower the threshold for new users to try (Binance wallet also has a separate 300,000 dollar trading competition). The combination of these three factors allows predict.fun to gain an exposure entry closer to exchange levels within just a few days of the World Cup start. Within just 3 days of the World Cup, predict.fun’s daily active users reached 20,000 with daily trading counts exceeding 180,000.
predict.fun daily active users and daily trading counts
After the influx of World Cup traffic, the prediction market enters a new phase
Less than a week after the World Cup starts, the prediction market has already delivered a performance report that exceeds expectations. In terms of trading volume, platform revenue, and user engagement, records are constantly being refreshed.
Polymarket proves the user mindset and liquidity advantage of top platforms through the World Cup; Kalshi, with clearer regulatory expectations, pushes compliant sports prediction markets to new scales; meanwhile, predict.fun gains enormous exposure and user growth through the Binance ecosystem entry and high incentives.
Despite different paths, all three platforms indicate the same thing — the World Cup brings not only traffic but also real trading demand. For the prediction market, sports has always been the most understandable, most engaging, and most likely to form high-frequency trading scenarios. And the World Cup, as one of the most followed sporting events globally, is amplifying this demand to an unprecedented scale.
As of now, most teams have only completed one group match. As the qualification situation becomes clearer and the knockout phase approaches, the importance of the matches, market sentiment, and funding focus will continue to rise. Whether in terms of trading volume, user numbers, or market heat, the prediction market has the opportunity to continue breaking records in the coming weeks.
For the prediction market, the World Cup brings not only a traffic explosion but also an opportunity to prove its own value. And based on the current data, this validation has just begun.
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