Prediction markets just crushed traditional sportsbooks in a massive $50 billion World Cup breakout

The World Cup did not just bring retail bettors to prediction markets. It brought Wall Street too. DRW, the Chicago-based trading giant, has been building a dedicated prediction market desk targeting Polymarket and Kalshi, applying cross-platform arbitrage techniques honed in derivatives markets.

Traditional sportsbooks: Record numbers, but no longer the only story

Before the tournament, gaming research firm Eilers and Krejcik projected U.S. legal sportsbooks would handle between $2.8 billion and $4.3 billion across the 104 matches. Those figures now look conservative. Operators across the board have said the tournament exceeded their most optimistic internal forecasts, and final state-level reporting, which lags by weeks, has not yet come in.

The anecdotal evidence is striking enough. Monday's U.S. vs Belgium round-of-16 match became the most-bet soccer game in the history of several major American books. BetMGM said it drew more bets than any 2026 College Football Playoff game bar the championship, the men's college basketball final or any title-series game from the NBA, NHL or MLB. “This World Cup has been record-type handle stuff for us this whole time,” BetMGM's Christian Cipollini told ESPN. DraftKings reported handle running at approximately five times its 2022 levels.

The conditions all pointed that way: 39 states now have legal mobile sports betting, up from 19 in 2022, North American hosting meant prime-time kickoffs, and the U.S. team's run to the round of 16 generated the kind of domestic interest soccer has never previously sustained. Caesars said 81% of its handle on the U.S. knockout match was on the Americans to advance. Globally, total World Cup wagering is projected to exceed $50 billion.