Prediction markets are drawing one of their largest sporting audiences yet to the World Cup, but the surge is creating an unusual picture beneath the headlines.
World Cup-linked contracts on Polymarket have generated more than $3.3 billion in trading volume, a level that puts the tournament well ahead of this year’s Super Bowl, which generated approximately $1.4 billion in prediction market trading.
The comparison reflects how quickly event-based trading has developed in the major sports, with the global reach of football giving platforms a much bigger and longer runway than a single championship match.
Meanwhile, the boom isn’t limited to Polymarket. Kalshi and other locations in the prediction market are also seeing high activity related to match results, tournament results and related football contracts.
Still, trading activity doesn’t flow neatly toward the teams most likely to win. As the tournament heads into the Round of 32, the prediction markets are showing two stories at once: a narrow race between the top contenders and a large amount of capital still tied to teams priced as extreme longshots.
France and Argentina set the pace
France has become the narrow market favorite to win the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with Argentina close behind.
Polymarket expects France to have a 23% chance of winning the tournament. Argentina follows with 21%, putting the two 2022 World Cup finalists almost evenly at the top of the table. Spain is in third place with 11%, England in fourth place with 10% and Brazil in fifth place with 6%.
World Cup Winner Betting on Polymarket (Source: Polymarket) The same pattern is visible in the market so that teams can reach the finals. France leads that contract with an implied probability of 39%, while Argentina is second with 38%. Spain follows with 23%.
This positioning suggests traders are increasingly preparing for the possibility of another France-Argentina final, four years after the Messi-led Argentina team lifted the trophy in Qatar.
The volume around the leading teams also reflects this concentration of attention. Argentina has taken in about $81 million in winner’s market trades, while France has taken in about $77 million. Portugal has earned about $76 million, Spain about $68 million and England about $61 million.
Those figures show a clear demand for the favorites, but do not explain the biggest imbalance on the board.
Longshots have a volume of billions
About $1.6 billion has been traded on teams with an implied win probability of 1% or less. That figure accounts for roughly two-thirds of the trading on the winners’ market, even though these teams are expected to have little realistic path to the title.
Several of the heavily traded longshots are still showing high historical volume. Ivory Coast has withdrawn approximately $101 million. Mexico moved about $97 million. Egypt has attracted approximately $90 million. Cape Verde earned almost $87 million, while Morocco earned about $82 million.
The gap between volume and probability points to a peculiarity of prediction markets. A high volume contract does not always mean that traders currently believe an outcome is likely. It could simply mean that many trades took place earlier in the tournament before the odds changed sharply.
Additionally, some positions may also be related to long-term speculation, fan-driven buying, hedges, parlays, or trades that users did not close.
That makes some markets look more active than current probabilities suggest.
This is because money can remain attached to teams even after the market has largely moved away from them. Unlike a sportsbook, where odds around new betting lines can be reset, prediction market contracts continue to trade until settlement or until users exit their positions.
The effect is especially clear when you compare it with the leading group of contenders. A basket of France, Argentina, Spain, England and Portugal together costs about 72 cents at current prices. If one of these five wins the tournament, the position pays $1.
That trading reflects how concentrated market confidence has become, even as billions in historic volume remain spread among outsiders.
In this sense, the World Cup board is not just a ranking of who is most likely to win. It’s also a record of how traders moved through the tournament, where they got in early, which tickets became outdated, and where liquidity failed to fully settle down.
A broader prediction market rise
The intense activity surrounding the global football tournament is driving broader institutional adoption and user acquisition in the prediction market sector.
Wall Street brokerage Bernstein predicts that World Cup-related trading could eventually surpass $10 billion in total wagers before the tournament ends on July 19.
This sporting catalyst also has a measurable spillover effect on non-sporting contracts.
Last week, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz published this facts This indicates that non-sports trading volume, which included geopolitical events, macroeconomic data releases and elections, reached $3.6 billion for Kalshi and Polymarket combined.
According to the company, this non-sports volume alone is now greater than the total aggregate volume of all prediction markets recorded just a year ago. In July 2025, weekly non-sports volume hovered around $200 million, representing an eighteenfold increase over the past twelve months.
Overall, the venture capital group noted that weekly trading volumes around the world The prediction market ecosystem reached an unprecedented $14.5 billion last week, with outstanding open interest of a record $1.6 billion for the third week in a row.
Questions about supervision are becoming louder
The commercial success of the World Cup markets is accompanied by renewed legal supervision of the sector.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has reportedly opened an investigation into Polymarket.
The investigation, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as consumer protection advocates and some states are pushing for better oversight of prediction market platforms. Polymarket and Kalshi have grown rapidly as users bet on everything from sports and elections to crypto prices and financial market outcomes.
For Polymarket, the investigation creates uncertainty after the platform resumed limited operations in the US last year. The company was previously barred from serving U.S. customers following an enforcement action in 2022.
The timing is notable because it comes at a time when prediction markets are publishing record volumes, just as regulators begin to look more closely at how the industry operates, how consumers are protected and where the line should be drawn between regulated event contracts and gambling.