Most world cup traders won less than $5 on Polymarket while FIVE wallets walked away with millions
Spain’s World Cup win capped a massive surge in prediction-market trading. Polymarket and Kalshi recorded about $5.57 billion in cumulative volume on tournament champion contracts, with Polymarket at roughly $4.28 billion and Kalshi at $1.29 billion. H2 Gambling Capital estimated prediction markets reached about 27% of legal U.S. sports-betting volume during the tournament, up from around 9% earlier in the year. The expanded 48-team, 104-match format created repeated trading opportunities on match results, advancement, goals, scorers, and awards, helping the event function like a continuous product. Results were highly concentrated: on Polymarket, about two-thirds of 194,422 trading addresses lost money, while a tiny share captured most gains and losses. Only 54 wallets made more than $100,000 each, and 43 lost more than $100,000 each. The boom also highlighted potential commercial uses for prediction markets, but growth now depends on retaining users beyond sports and navigating disputes over regulation, insider risk, and whether these contracts are betting or derivatives.
