Posted on: May 27, 2026, 07:47h.
Last updated on: May 27, 2026, 07:47h.
- Kalshi, Polymarket combined April volume reached $24 billion, according to Pew
- Average month in 2025 for US sportsbooks was $14 billion in handle terms
- Sports drove 80% of turnover on Kalshi last month
Prediction market volume is soaring and depending on one’s perspective, that’s bad news for sportsbook operators. Or maybe not.
Last month, combined turnover on Kalshi and Polymarket, the titans of the global prediction market industry, reached $24 billion, a nearly fivefold increase from the $5 billion the two operators notched in aggregate in September, according to Pew Research Center.
For comparison, the total amount of money wagered through legal sportsbooks in the United States was around $14 billion per month in 2025, on average,” notes Pew.
Steadily rising turnover on platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket is one of the reason sports betting stocks struggled over the past year as analysts and investors fretted that event contracts represent a competitive threat to legacy sports wagering.
Prediction Market Volume, Sportsbook Handle Aren’t Comparable
As many grizzled sports betting industry veterans have noted, the comparison of prediction market volume and sports betting handle shouldn’t be made at all.
The latter gauges the total dollar amount wagered on a specific event. For example, if FanDuel accepts $1 million in wagers on a single NFL game, the handle is $1 million. On the other handle, prediction market volume measures both buy and sell orders in notional terms, making that statistic incompatible with handle.
So at a time when some sharp bettors and “whales” are transitioning to Kalshi and Polymarket from sportsbooks, prediction market volume is likely to increase because those market participants have the financial resources to affect volume and they may be frequently moving in and out of positions, creating more turnover in the process.
As for the April prediction market volume tally, Kalshi commanded more than half with $13.7 billion. Polymarket US accounted for $1.3 billion while Polymarket’s international platform garnered $9 billion in activity, according to Pew.
Sports Loom Large on Kalshi, Less so on Polymarket
Perhaps this will change when Polymarket rolls out to a broader base of US bettors and traders, but for now, it’s less dependent on sports event contracts than rival Kalshi. Pew points out that since July 2024, sports derivatives accounted for 80% of Kalshi’s volume compared to just 39% for Polymarket.
Over that period, Polymarket’s volume was more balanced across sports, cryptocurrency and politics with the latter two categories accounting for 20% and 32% of the exchange’s volume, according to Pew.
Since July 2024, cryptocurrency and political derivatives drove 7% and 4%, respectively, of Kalshi’s turnover.
“Notably, political markets made up 90% of the trading volume on Kalshi and 65% on Polymarket in October and November 2024 – around the time of the U.S. presidential election. At the time, Kalshi had not yet introduced sports trading,” concludes Pew.
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