The World Cup is over, which means soccer fans will have to bide their time and wait for the next international competition to come along.
Football bettors, however, may have a shorter wait. More specifically, American football bettors, many of which likely had a wager or two on the World Cup, will soon turn their attention to the most popular of all sports gambling pastimes in the U.S.: the NFL.
The NFL remains king in the world of legalized sports betting in the U.S. Moreover, the massive amounts of wagering on the World Cup and recent regulatory and legislative developments suggest the NFL season will be a busy one for bookmakers and exchanges.
Speaking to SBC Americas, Covers.com senior news analyst Geoff Zochodne explains how massive the World Cup was for legalized wagering, and how much it could mean going forward.
SBC Americas: Soccer typically takes a backseat to football, basketball, and baseball among U.S. sports fans. So how big was the World Cup in terms of wagering activity in the U.S.?
Geoff Zochodne: It was relatively huge. DraftKings, for example, said that it saw a 650% increase in total bets on the 2026 World Cup compared to the 2022 run. BetMGM, meanwhile, said the Spain-Argentina final was the most-bet soccer match in the company’s history. The same trend was seen among prediction market platforms such as Kalshi, which experienced a significant World Cup-related surge in activity as new users signed up and took advantage of our Kalshi promo code.
One research firm, H2 Gambling Capital, estimated that $2.9 billion would be wagered in the U.S. on the World Cup, which would be more than double the approximately $1.3 billion bet on the sport at legal sportsbooks in June and July of 2025.
I said “relatively,” though, because it’s hard to nail down exactly how much was wagered and how much has changed since the 2022 World Cup.
SBC Americas: So what changed between 2022 and 2026? What would account for the big increases?
Geoff Zochodne: A lot. In Ohio, for example, there was no legalized sports betting yet in 2022. That changed at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2023, when state-regulated wagering went live in the state.
Additional states, such as Kentucky and Massachusetts, launched legalized sports gambling between the two World Cups as well. So the regulated market is just so much bigger.
More recently, federally regulated prediction markets have expanded that market even more. After dipping a toe into the sports business in late 2024, sports is now the main driver of their business. Kalshi reported nearly $1.9 billion in trading volume for the World Cup winner market. And while that’s not directly comparable to sportsbook handle, it was almost four times the volume of the $500 million traded on this year’s Super Bowl.
SBC Americas: Is that interest in betting on soccer something that’s going to continue, and carry over into wagering on league soccer? Will World Cup bettors in the U.S. take more of an interest in, say, the English Premier League?
Geoff Zochodne: Eh, I kinda doubt it. I think it will take another World Cup before you see another spike in soccer wagering in the U.S. That has to do with a few factors, namely, that matches were played in the U.S., which meant the games were on at a time most Americans could watch.
Also, the USMNT was participating and winning (until Belgium ended their run in resounding fashion), attracting support from the most casual of bettors.
Soccer just doesn’t really rank among the top sports that people are betting on in the U.S. The king really remains the other football, college and NFL.
SBC Americas: Will sportsbooks and prediction markets be able to parlay this interest in the World Cup into that football season, then?
Geoff Zochodne: Very much so. For state-regulated sportsbooks, the bettors are going to be back in the fall for football. It’s a virtual certainty, because the American sports bettor is usually an NFL bettor as well. Having these bettors wager at all on soccer is already a win.
The biggest winners in the wagering world will be prediction markets, though. Kalshi, for example, claims it added three million users during the World Cup. Those traders are now very aware of the sort of thing Kalshi offers.
And while the legality of sports event contracts is being challenged in the courts, they’ll still be available in most states come NFL season. Moreover, Kalshi is tapping into states such as California and Texas, which do not have state-regulated sports betting. So prediction markets are the de facto sportsbooks there.
SBC Americas: What sort of legal challenges are prediction markets facing? And will these challenges facing prediction markets put a damper on their football season?
Geoff Zochodne: The thrust of all is that you have a growing number of states seeing the trading of sports event contracts as just sports betting by another name, and then trying to stop that activity. On the other side, you have the prediction markets, which are federally regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and believing only the CFTC can tell them to pull any given contract. The CFTC sees things similar to how prediction markets do, and has sued states to try to block them from taking action against the exchanges.
As for how these lawsuits will impact prediction markets this football season, it’s tough to be certain, because you never know how and when courts will rule. What I’ll say is that, right now, the states where prediction markets have faced the harshest restrictions (namely, Nevada and Michigan), already have legalized sports betting. So there is lots of competition for wagering there, and bettors in the state did and do have options. They also aren’t the biggest in terms of population, unlike California and Texas, where prediction markets are still fully accessible.
SBC Americas: Will these legal challenges be resolved by the next World Cup?
Geoff Zochodne: I think so. And that’s also why this World Cup could be so important for prediction markets, because they may not have another one for which they can facilitate wagering in the U.S. If the courts, and particularly the Supreme Court, were to rule that sports event contracts can’t be offered, that could take the 2030 World Cup off the table for the exchanges.
However, if sports are gone, prediction markets could still offer contracts tied to elections, entertainment, and economics. Getting users in the door via sports, even if that eventually goes away, could mean those users still turn to you for election betting or something else.
There’s also another outcome, which is that SCOTUS ultimately determines that sports event contracts are fine and the CFTC continues to see it the same way. Then the 2030 World Cup just becomes another tentpole event for prediction markets, just as it would be for state-regulated sportsbooks.
