How many times will Elon Musk post on X today? Will Donald Trump do anything this week? Hantavirus pandemic in 2026? Where will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding occur?
Oh, and who will win the 2026 World Cup?
Welcome to the world of prediction markets, the increasingly popular betting platform that allows users to stake money, cash or crypto, on a wide range of topics.
Just don’t call it gambling in the United States because, well, it technically isn’t… yet.
In recent months, prediction markets have become mainstream. Whether it is Kalshi, the Manhattan-based company launched in 2021, or Polymarket, also headquartered in New York City, the chances are you have seen or heard about them.
Polymarket made global headlines when, in January, an anonymous gambler made $436,000 (£320,000) from a $32,537 (£24,000) bet on the capture of then Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro just before it was officially announced by the U.S. government, prompting questions over whether someone profited from inside knowledge of the operation. On April 24, a U.S. Army soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, was indicted in Manhattan federal court on charges including the unlawful use of confidential information for personal gain and wire fraud. On April 28, he pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Even Karoline Leavitt, U.S. President Trump’s press secretary, was at the center of a prediction market conspiracy theory when she abruptly ended a press conference in January, moments before a key betting threshold concerning the length of the event.
And now FIFA has joined the prediction-market craze for this summer’s men’s World Cup, which is being held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
World football’s governing body has entered into a commercial partnership with ADI Predictstreet, a company owned by Abu Dhabi’s royal family, that launched on April 10. This came just days after it was issued a gambling license in Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory situated on Spain’s south coast that has long been a center for gambling, due to low tax rates.
Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory on Spain’s south coast (Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The record speed at which Gibraltar granted the company a license was defended by Andrew Lyman, its gambling commissioner, in an interview with Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation, where he said there was a “concentrated focus” to issue it in the run-up to the World Cup.
Lyman also highlighted “negativity from journalists looking naturally for a sensationalist angle” in relation to the license and prediction markets more generally.
When contacted by The Athletic, a corporate statement from ADI Predictstreet read: “We are committed to operating in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in every market. Our license in Gibraltar reflects our commitment to operating within robust regulatory frameworks and meeting the highest standards of compliance, transparency, and user protection. We are taking a similarly disciplined, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approach as we expand globally ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026 this summer.
ADI Predictstreet’s statement added that it has a “multi-layered market monitoring program designed to detect potential rule violations.” This, it says, includes “automated transaction monitoring, real-time compliance oversight, cross-market blockchain analytics and regulatory cooperation with the relevant authorities in each jurisdiction in which we operate.”
FIFA’s statement when announcing the partnership on April 2 noted that fans will be able to “participate in dynamic prediction-based experiences” via ADI Predictstreet’s platform by predicting “match outcomes, tournament statistics, standout player and key moments.”
“In line with relevant regulations, statutes and market best practice, FIFA conducts relevant due diligence and a thorough evaluation prior to the signing of any new commercial partnership,” a FIFA spokesperson told The Athletic.
“The partnership includes a comprehensive integrity monitoring framework, consisting of real time monitoring of suspicious and irregular trading activity during the World Cup on the ADI Predictstreet platform and structured information sharing and reporting systems between FIFA and ADI.”
Polymarket did not reply to The Athletic when approached for comment.
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The Athletic spoke to experts with an understanding of the gambling industry to explain the controversy around prediction markets, why some are trying to get them classified as gambling, why FIFA got involved, and whether the two biggest sports leagues in the United States, the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA), will follow suit.
The United Kingdom’s Gambling Commission considers staking money on prediction markets to be a form of gambling. In the U.S., however, they are federally regulated under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and are not legally classified as gambling.
“As of today, 62 percent of the U.S. population has access to sports betting,” Jordan Bender, managing director of gaming equity research at Citizens Bank, tells The Athletic. “What prediction markets have done is found a regulatory loophole, where they can offer these ‘sports contracts’ at the federal level, so they can bypass state laws or state regulation.”
That means in states where gambling is illegal, prediction markets open a new avenue for those who wish to place wagers on the outcome of an event, be it political or sporting. Nevada, home to the casino capital of the world, Las Vegas, is the only state where a judge has put an injunction on prediction-market company Kalshi, preventing it from offering event-specific contracts that would enable its residents to place bets on sports.
Nevada, the state where Las Vegas is located, has an injunction on the prediction-market company Kalshi (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
“It’s definitely gambling, let’s put it that way, but is it legally gambling? Right now, it’s not,” says Dustin Gouker, a U.S.-based gambling and prediction markets analyst and author of The Closing Line on Substack.
“There are dozens of court cases in federal and state courts trying to get to that answer to that question, and it will eventually end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, but right now, it’s all green lights at the federal level.
“Sports event contracts are here until we get that Supreme Court case or until Congress comes in and tries to pass a bill, which seems unlikely.”
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There have been some efforts at the Congressional level to pass laws on prediction markets, including a bipartisan bill led by senators Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, called the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act.
If passed and enacted, this would prevent the “CFTC-registered entities from listing any prediction contract that resembles a sports bet or casino-style game.”
Senator Schiff’s office highlighted to The Athletic that the bill will be referred to the Senate Agriculture Committee, which he sits on and which the CFTC falls within, as he pushes to advance the legislation. They note that prediction markets are coming under increasing scrutiny from both sides of the aisle, and predict strong interest in holding hearings and taking legislative action.
The CFTC, however, is fighting attempts to have prediction markets classified as gambling.
On April 24, it announced on its website that it had filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to “halt the State of New York’s efforts to apply state gambling laws against CFTC-registered markets”.
“CFTC-registered exchanges have faced an onslaught of state lawsuits seeking to limit Americans’ access to event contracts and undermine the CFTC’s sole regulatory jurisdiction over prediction markets,” CFTC chairman Michael S. Selig said in the statement. “As I’ve said before, the CFTC will not allow overzealous state governments to undermine the agency’s longstanding authority over these markets.”
It has launched similar lawsuits in Arizona, Illinois and Connecticut.
In relation to how sports prediction markets differ from sports betting, Kalshi states on its website that they are an “exchange where people on both sides of trades can meet”. In contrast, they say, “sports betting operates like a casino, where everyone is playing against the ‘house’.
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“Kalshi works like the stock market, with customers trading against other customers,” their website adds. “In short: unlike a casino, Kalshi doesn’t win when our customers lose.”
Through the lens of the World Cup, it is difficult to ascertain just how popular prediction markets will be. Soccer has never been America’s favorite sport, but the global nature of the tournament means it will attract eyeballs from all over. And once the games are being played, interest tends to increase.
“It hasn’t ever been something that moves the needle for customer acquisition and it has never been a huge driver of revenue,” Gouker says of the relationship between sports betting in the U.S. and the World Cup.
Gouker said he wouldn’t be surprised if he saw $2 billion traded on the tournament, which kicks off on June 11, although he noted prediction markets “are designed to be an in-game betting experience”.
Kylian Mbappe and France will be among the favorites competing this summer (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
“People will definitely bet on outcomes before the games start, but you will start seeing the activity when the games start,” Gouker added. “It’s very much attuned to be a live betting experience.”
“June and July are the slowest periods of the sports calendar year,” Bender said. “The World Cup essentially adds this tentpole event to what is otherwise a dead period. It will be about the same size as the Super Bowl, so about $1.7 billion handle (total amount of money wagered) in the United States.”
FIFA is not the first sporting organization to sign a deal with a prediction markets company, nor is it likely to be the last.
At the beginning of April, La Liga, the top soccer division in Spain, became the first European league to announce a “multi-year partnership” with Polymarket, making it its “exclusive prediction market partner” in the U.S. and Canada.
In the U.S., Major League Baseball (MLB), Major League Soccer (MLS) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have entered into commercial partnerships with Polymarket, while the National Hockey League (NHL) has twin deals with Kalshi and Polymarket.
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Reporting by Front Office Sports in March cited sources saying the MLB-Polymarket deal is worth $300 million over four years.
Interestingly, the NFL and NBA are yet to sign a commercial partnership in this space. One area of obvious concern is spot-fixing and the integrity issues that stem from that.
MLB is among the leagues to have entered into a partnership with Polymarket (Jason Mowry/Getty Images)
In separate statements last month, Kalshi and Polymarket announced new measures aimed at preventing insider trading.
Kalshi said it was introducing “new technological guardrails” that will enable it to “preemptively block” politicians and athletes from trading in “certain politics and sports markets”, while Polymarket said it had updated and clarified its regulations on insider trading.
By partnering with prediction markets, Gouker believes sporting organizations could gain “more of a measure of control”, ultimately concluding that they “don’t have any choice but to work with them, especially on integrity matters.
“The problem is that it’s not regulated like gambling, that’s maybe the biggest concern that sports folks have.”
“The big ones that we’re looking at are the NFL and NBA,” Bender says. “That’s the tipping point of where it gets real for this industry. If they say yes, that’s a pretty big deal.”
Although it is too early to predict when, Bender believes that those two leagues will “ultimately get comfortable” with prediction markets.
A broader question is whether sports should want to associate themselves with such platforms. However, sport often has a habit of following the money — and that is undoubtedly coming from prediction markets at the moment.
Gouker expected there to be “more reticence by the leagues” that have already signed deals with prediction-markets companies, noting that Polymarket, for example, allows users to use cryptocurrency to make predictions on the outcome of wars.
“You are putting your brand next to that, which carries some risks and worries,” Gouker says.
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“We’ve seen very, very odd markets created, where you’d have to question the integrity,” Lee Hills, a gambling licensing expert and chief executive of SolutionsHub, tells The Athletic.
“Some of the questions being asked on these prediction markets are highly questionable. Will they kill ‘(Person) X’? You’re talking about creating markets for the death of a human being.”
The NFL, above, and NBA are yet to sign a deal in the prediction market space (Aaron M Sprecher/Getty Images)
Prediction markets have made plenty of noise in recent months, but the consensus is still that traditional betting companies in the U.S. need not be too worried about them invading their turf and immediately taking away customers.
Bender goes back to his earlier point of how 62 percent of the American population can access legal sports betting, leaving 38 percent without it.
This, he says, is why we have seen “such an explosion” of prediction markets in sports, adding that “these companies have spent what could be billions of dollars in marketing to acquire customers in a very untapped part of the population”.
“FanDuel, DraftKings and Fanatics, three of the four biggest sports books here, have prediction markets,” Gouker says, “but they can’t do it in states where they are already offering legal sports betting, nor would they really want to, because they would be putting their gambling licenses at risk.
“They are not on equal footing with prediction markets, as they can do it pretty much wherever they want to, unless the court absolutely says they can’t.
“I don’t think prediction markets are going to come in and totally replace sports betting. Eventually, it is going to cannibalize some of what’s going on in regulated sports betting. It won’t be overnight, but it will happen.”
Just how much of the sports betting market they can challenge is tough to forecast, but sporting bodies and leagues are sensing an opportunity to cash in.
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MLS, La Liga and FIFA have already crossed that line. The World Cup will likely be another big moment. Which leagues could be next? And when?
The controversy surrounding prediction markets, whether they should be classified as gambling and the resultant regulation that could follow is unlikely to disappear any time soon.