Several representatives for prediction market platform Kalshi appeared at last weekend’s Manifest 2025 in Berkeley, California. The annual conference, which debuted in 2023, was created by the people behind Manifold Markets, a D.I.Y. prediction marketplace where users create their own markets and others can earn fake currency when their trades prove correct. The Manifest 2025 conference is self-described as a “festival for forecasts, markets, and novel ideas.”
On Sunday, Kalshi’s head of operations, Noah Sternig, and Jack Such, head of public relations, participated in a Manifest 2025 discussion about the prediction platform’s addition of sports markets this year. The pair touched on the huge success of sports markets on the platform so far, some of the challenges they present, how sports markets might expand in the future and how their success can help the platform as a whole.
Kalshi sees huge sports trading volume since introducing markets
Kalshi launched sports prediction markets in January of this year, ahead of Super Bowl LIX. Most of the sports markets currently available at Kalshi are related to single-game and series/playoff outcomes, which are similar to moneyline and futures betting at sportsbooks.
Such said that since launching sports markets, “it’s gone pretty well,” which is a bit of an understatement. Week to week, sports markets often attract the overwhelming majority of trading volume at Kalshi. Such said that in the five months since introducing sports markets, they’ve cumulatively attracted about $1.4 billion in trading volume. By comparison, after the overturning of PASPA in 2018, all U.S. sportsbooks combined took in $1.3 billion in handle in their first year of operations. He did note, however, that trading volume and handle are slightly different metrics, so it’s not an apples to apples comparison.
Sternig said Kalshi does look at how sportsbooks handle their markets, “using them as a guideline and a good reference for making decisions.” When Kalshi adds markets, they know there are certain things they can’t look to sportsbooks to mimic because of the differences in the platforms and differing regulatory structures.
Sternig said:
“If we’re ever making a decision that contradicts or is different from these major public sportsbooks, we need to have a really good reason to do it. And that can make things hard because we are operating under different constraints, and some of those are as a result of the exchange model, and some are a result of our regulation in order to build out sports on Kalshi.”
While sports markets have drawn a lot of trading volume to Kalshi, Sternig noted that the markets don’t deliver the same kind of huge revenues to the prediction platform as they do for sportsbooks.
“Kalshi operates and makes money or generates revenue as a result of our trading fees, which are inherently going to be a lot less than the vig that a sportsbook has.”
He added that trading fees are split between the platform and market makers, who help set the pricing and odds initially to provide liquidity and ensure there are always buyers and sellers available, even on low-volume event contracts. They also now share their revenue pie with retail brokers they partner with to offer their markets to a wider audience.
Kalshi’s challenges adapting to sports market trading
One challenge Sternig mentioned was that, in Kalshi’s sports markets, they have to be careful to not infringe on copyrights, like team and league names. That’s why Kalshi uses more generalized terms, like “Pro Basketball Championship” for their NBA Finals markets. Most pro team names are presented on Kalshi as just the city, but when there are cities with two teams, Kalshi uses its own shorthand. So, for example, the New York Mets and Yankees are shown as “New York M” and “New York Y.”
Sternig admitted that this particular approach doesn’t provide the best user experience.
“We’re definitely working on figuring out routes and ways that we can make this better and more intuitive,” he said, “similar to how sportsbooks have done it, but it’s a pretty difficult problem we have right now.”
Sportsbooks get around the problem by partnering with leagues and sharing revenue, he added. The pair said Kalshi has adopted other sportsbook-like features, knowing that sports bettors new to prediction markets might be looking for them. When sports markets launched, Kalshi introduced consumer protection tools similar to the responsible gambling ones offered at sportsbooks, through which users can self-impose deposit limits or ban themselves from particular markets.
Sternig also noted that Kalshi lets traders change how odds are presented, after getting feedback that some users don’t like just seeing odds as a percentage of likelihood, specifically within sports markets. In their settings, Kalshi users can change those to American odds, which most U.S. sportsbooks use (things like +250 or -120).
Will Kalshi continue to expand into new sports trading markets?
Prediction market users and analysts have been watching to see if/when Kalshi might expand its offerings to provide other markets similar to ones found at sportsbooks. In June, ahead of the NBA Finals, Kalshi introduced a “series score” market and an NBA Finals MVP market, both of which have been widely available at major sports betting platforms.
When asked if there were sportsbook markets that they were envious of because Kalshi doesn’t offer them, Sternig mentioned point spreads. He noted that spreads are particularly popular in the U.S., whereas European bettors — and he, personally — prefer moneylines.
Still, Sternig said Kalshi recognizes the interest in these different kinds of betting/trading types. While he wouldn’t get into specifics, he said Kalshi is exploring ways to add different market types that align with their “regulatory strategy” and the mechanics and framework of the trading exchange.
“We’re hopefully going to find more ways and avenues (for) people to be able to hedge and trade on their teams,” said Sternig.
Parlays present unique challenges for prediction markets
As for parlays, which have become a popular revenue-driving option at sportsbooks, Sternig and Such noted that Kalshi has attempted to offer them with certain non-sports markets in the past, but interest was minimal. For example, they said, Kalshi previously had markets for what the high temperature would be in four cities and what 10 movies would be nominated in the Oscars’ Best Picture category.
Such said the difficulty with sports market parlays is that each parlay would have to be its own market and that the exchange model is “not suited to do parlays at scale, like the books do.”
According to Such:
“I think the difficulty with parlays on Kalshi is just the exchange model. You know, if you’re a house, everything’s going one way. Somebody places an 8-leg parlay, you’re totally happy to just set a price likely with some sort of extreme vig and let people trade on it. On Kalshi, each parlay, especially these kinds of more complex ones that people love to do — 8-legs, 9-legs, across different categories — is its own unique market that would need to spin up its own unique liquidity, essentially.”
Still, Sternig said Kalshi is continuing to explore ways that sports parlays could work on the platform.
“On the front end, it’s pretty difficult to show every parlay that anyone’s ever made. I do think there is something to be said about maybe (offering), like, the Top 5 parlays that were made this day, or, like, this is a popular combination. Like, this is … the Wisconsin parlay. It has, like, Green Bay and Milwaukee. People want to get action on that because they’re Wisconsin fans.”
Is sports success hurting other Kalshi markets?
One of the questions the Kalshi representatives fielded at Manifest 2025 was about concerns that the non-sports markets might be deemphasized as sports become increasingly popular.
Such said that one of the main reasons sports have been so overwhelmingly popular at Kalshi has been timing. Like with sportsbooks, Kalshi’s sports markets saw a huge influx of trades during the football and college and pro basketball playoffs and championships. Such said he expects the sports trading volume to decline over the summer. He also said that sports markets are primarily what the brokers they work with, like Robinhood, are offering, creating a disproportionate bump in sports trading volume.
But, ultimately, Such said he feels like the introduction of sports markets will also help the economic, cultural, politics and other markets Kalshi offers.
“I actually think the addition of sports is a very beneficial thing, where sports is this extremely popular, wide-ranging thing that people love to trade on. And by getting people on the platform via sports, it makes it much easier to introduce them to political markets or economic markets or anything that’s happening in the news.”
By attracting trading volume with sports markets and also some of the bigger non-sports markets, like the U.S. presidential election or the more recent papal election, Kalshi adds new traders who will have completed the initial verification process at sign-up and have funded accounts. Those traders, he said, could be more willing to trade on a wider variety of markets, which creates more trading volume overall and could benefit all markets.
Such said:
“All that (offering markets with bigger draws) does for the products is just increase the liquidity, increase the efficiency of the markets. And, you know, I think most people here agree that one of the great social goods of our platform is these accurate probabilities of real world events, and those only get better the more people and the more liquidity we have on the platform. And I think sports is a great Trojan horse for us to achieve that.”
For more about the recent Manifest summit, check out Prediction News political analyst and industry reporter Chris Gerlacher’s recap of the conference here.
