Remove sports from July’s prediction-market volume, and $53 billion becomes roughly $11 billion.
That’s the split in Pew Research Center’s new report, published September 23.
Sports accounted for:
• $31.4B on Kalshi
• $10.6B on Polymarket, including its US platform
Together, that’s about 79% of their combined volume.
Politics, meanwhile, contributed less than $900M across both platforms that month.
The World Cup helped drive the surge. But combined volume still reached $47B in August after the tournament ended.
One detail worth keeping straight: Pew measures contracts at their $1 face value. These figures measure notional trading volume, not $53B of fresh cash deposited.
My takeaway: restrictions on sports contracts would hit the category responsible for most of this activity. The industry’s growth story is heavily tied to keeping those markets available.