Kalshi and Polymarket June volume surges 75% to $45 billion on World Cup betting
Kalshi and Polymarket's combined trading volume surged 75% to roughly $45 billion in June, driven by FIFA World Cup event contracts. Kalshi led with a record month, posting $31.5 billion in volume per The Block, an 87.4% jump from May's $16.81 billion. The spike reflects heavy retail and institutional betting activity around the global soccer tournament that kicked off June 11. Both platforms are CFTC-regulated.
The $45 billion figure resets what regulators and institutional investors consider normal for event-contract markets. For Kalshi and Polymarket, World Cup volume is a live stress test of whether their infrastructure can handle sportsbook-scale flow without settlement failures or spread blowouts.
The platforms need this proof to justify the DRW, Wintermute, and IMC market-making commitments already in place and to support Kalshi's $40 billion valuation talks. A clean tournament settlement opens the NFL and Olympics as next verticals. A cracked settlement or fraud case hands state attorneys general their sharpest evidence yet that these contracts are gambling instruments, not derivatives.
The World Cup is now the first major sporting event to drive prediction-market volume past the $40 billion monthly threshold, joining the bespoke political-events liquidity tests that brought DRW, Wintermute, and IMC onto Kalshi and Polymarket as institutional market makers.