Polymarket’s $3.3B World Cup boom exposes the longshot trap inside prediction markets
Prediction markets are drawing one among their largest sports activities audiences but from the World Cup, however the surge is creating an uncommon image beneath the headline numbers.
World Cup-linked contracts on Polymarket have generated greater than $3.3 billion in buying and selling quantity, a degree that places the event nicely forward of this 12 months’s Super Bowl, which drew about $1.4 billion in prediction-market buying and selling.
The comparability displays how rapidly event-based buying and selling has moved into main sports activities, with soccer’s world attain giving platforms a a lot bigger and longer runway than a single championship sport.
Meanwhile, the boom isn’t restricted to Polymarket. Kalshi and different prediction-market venues are additionally seeing heavy exercise tied to match outcomes, event outcomes, and associated soccer contracts.
Yet the buying and selling exercise isn’t flowing cleanly towards the groups more than likely to win. As the tournament moves into the Round of 32, prediction markets are exhibiting two tales directly: a slim race between the high contenders and a considerable amount of capital nonetheless connected to groups priced as excessive longshots.
France and Argentina set the tempo
France has turn out to be the market’s slim favourite to win the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with Argentina shut behind.
On Polymarket, France is priced at a 23% likelihood of successful the event. Argentina follows at 21%, leaving the two finalists from the 2022 World Cup virtually degree at the high of the board. Spain is third at 11%, England is fourth at 10%, and Brazil is fifth at 6%.
World Cup Winner Bets on Polymarket (Source: Polymarket)The similar sample is seen in the market for groups to achieve the closing. France leads that contract with a 39% implied likelihood, whereas Argentina is second at 38%. Spain follows at 23%.
That positioning suggests merchants are more and more making ready for the risk of one other France-Argentina closing, 4 years after the Messi-led Argentine workforce lifted the trophy in Qatar.
The quantity round the main groups additionally displays that focus of consideration. Argentina has drawn about $81 million in winner-market buying and selling, whereas France has attracted about $77 million. Portugal has seen roughly $76 million, Spain about $68 million, and England about $61 million.
Those numbers present a transparent demand for the favorites, however they don’t clarify the largest imbalance on the board.
Longshots carry billions in quantity
About $1.6 billion has been traded on groups with an implied successful chance of 1% or much less. That determine accounts for roughly two-thirds of the buying and selling on the winner market, although these groups are priced as having little reasonable path to the title.
Several of the closely traded longshots nonetheless present giant historic quantity. Ivory Coast has drawn about $101 million. Mexico has moved about $97 million. Egypt has attracted roughly $90 million. Cape Verde is close to $87 million, whereas Morocco has seen about $82 million.
The hole between quantity and chance factors to a quirk of prediction markets. A high-volume contract doesn’t at all times imply merchants at present imagine an consequence is probably going. It could merely imply many trades occurred earlier in the event, earlier than odds shifted sharply.
Additionally, some positions might also be tied to longshot hypothesis, fan-driven shopping for, hedges, parlays, or trades that customers haven’t closed.
That leaves some markets wanting extra lively than the present possibilities counsel.
This is as a result of Money can stay connected to groups even after the market has largely moved on from them. Unlike a sportsbook, the place odds can reset round new betting traces, prediction-market contracts proceed buying and selling till settlement or till customers exit their positions.
The impact is very clear when put next with the main group of contenders. A basket of France, Argentina, Spain, England, and Portugal prices about 72 cents mixed at present costs. If any a kind of 5 wins the event, the place pays $1.
That commerce displays how concentrated the market’s confidence has turn out to be, whilst billions in historic quantity stay scattered throughout outsiders.
In that sense, the World Cup board isn’t just a rating of who’s more than likely to win. It can also be a file of how merchants moved via the event, the place they entered early, which tickets turned stale, and the place liquidity has didn’t unwind absolutely.
A wider prediction market surge
The intense exercise surrounding the world soccer event is driving broader institutional adoption and consumer acquisition throughout the prediction market sector.
Wall Street brokerage agency Bernstein initiatives that World Cup-related buying and selling may finally surpass $10 billion in complete wagers earlier than the event concludes on July 19.
This sporting catalyst can also be having a measurable spillover impact on non-sporting contracts.
Last week, enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz printed data indicating that non-sports buying and selling quantity, encompassing geopolitical occasions, macroeconomic information releases, and elections, reached $3.6 billion throughout Kalshi and Polymarket mixed.
According to the agency, this non-sports quantity alone is now bigger than the complete mixture quantity of all prediction markets recorded only one 12 months in the past. In July 2025, weekly non-sports quantity hovered close to the $200 million mark, representing an 18-fold improve over the previous 12 months.
Overall, the enterprise capital group famous that weekly buying and selling volumes throughout the prediction market ecosystem reached an unprecedented $14.5 billion final week, with excellent open curiosity at a file $1.6 billion for the third consecutive week.
Oversight questions develop louder
The industrial success of the World Cup markets arrives alongside renewed legal scrutiny for the sector.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has reportedly opened an investigation into Polymarket.
The probe, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as client safety advocates and a few states push for nearer oversight of prediction-market platforms. Polymarket and Kalshi have grown quickly as customers wager on all the pieces from sports activities and elections to crypto costs and financial-market outcomes.
For Polymarket, the investigation provides uncertainty after the platform resumed restricted US operations final 12 months. The firm had beforehand been barred from serving US clients following a 2022 enforcement motion.
The timing is notable as a result of it comes as prediction markets are posting file volumes, simply as regulators are taking a more in-depth have a look at how the sector operates, how customers are protected, and the place the line needs to be drawn between regulated occasion contracts and playing.
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