Two major events are about to collide, and prediction markets are not ready for it. The NFL season begins Wednesday night with the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks repeating their 2026 Super Bowl matchup, while Labor Day signals the start of midterm election campaigning. Each event on its own has pushed prediction markets to record highs in recent years, and now both are unfolding within just a few months of each other.
The daily trading volume is now routinely measured in billions. Two companies lead the field:
- Kalshi
- Polymarket
A number of smaller exchanges follow behind, competing for their own slice of the market. The downturn could prove particularly difficult for the newer platforms.
“This NFL cycle is the real key, make or break” for many newer companies, said Seni Thomas, CEO at EDGE Markets, a financial technology company working in sports betting and prediction markets.
Sports and Politics Collide
The presidential election brought prediction markets into the spotlight in 2024. Just twelve months afterward, the NFL season kicked off in September 2025, setting off a run of increased trading activity that has continued without pause ever since.
The NFL season opens Wednesday with the Patriots-Seahawks game, and at the same time, the midterm campaign season officially begins.
Even as the platforms push further into sports, they face states that treat sports-related event contracts as a form of gambling and want them regulated by state authorities instead of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC is the Wall Street watchdog that currently oversees the industry.
“We operate pursuant to the regulations of the CFTC, and we’ll continue to do so, and continue to work with stakeholders to run a safe and trusted product,” said Ari Borod, president of sports business development at Polymarket, in August before announcing a partnership with the New York Yankees.
Record Days and Platform Battles
Tuesday saw Polymarket launch an advertisement with LeBron James, Eli Manning and Derek Jeter as part of a football season marketing push. The company also revealed a new offering for its U.S. exchange, allowing users to converse, share and trade among themselves on the platform.
On the opening day of college football, Saturday saw Kalshi hit a trading volume of $2.3 billion, marking a record for the platform. The company also launched a tool for speculators who had bet on 2025 NFL season markets to follow how their wagers fared before the current season began. Kalshi has also added more partnerships with individual sports teams in preparation for the MLB playoff season.
When college football play began, both platforms encountered technical issues. Polymarket’s U.S. platform was down for most of Saturday, and any account that suffered losses because of the outage was eventually refunded. Kalshi prematurely resolved a market on the University of Michigan game, paying traders as if the underdog Western Michigan had pulled off an upset. Later, Kalshi corrected the Michigan result and paid out accordingly.
New Entrants Join the Chase
The prediction market platform Rothera, which was built through a joint venture between Susquehanna International Group and Robinhood, drew major traffic when it went live during the FIFA World Cup over the summer.
“Rolling out all these sports, that’s a big lift,” CEO Thomas Chippas said. “We’ve only been live since the last week of May … We’re going as fast as we can, as prudently we can.”
On Wednesday, Novig, which is limited to sports event contracts, launched an NFL marketing push with an advertisement starring actress Sydney Sweeney. She is among the first celebrities to partner with a smaller exchange.
Dean Sisun, co-founder and CEO of ProphetX, said revenue for the platform doubled from June to August as it rebuilt its consumer platform and pushed for more trading during the NFL season. The company first launched in June with a focus on sports-related event contracts.
“I would love to see it four to 5x by the end of the year on a run rate basis … I really think we can do that,” Sisun said in an interview.
Midterms Bring a Longer Runway
Sisun has said ProphetX plans to add midterm election-related markets alongside its existing sports event contracts. At the same time, Robinhood is already showing Rothera’s elections-focused contracts to customers using its brokerage service.
Before November, Kalshi rolled out multiple tools, with a midterm elections hub coming in July, which gave users data on political races nationwide. For election night, the company is planning an in-person gathering, while also weighing the best approach for traders and viewers to track how odds across races shift as results arrive.
Unlike in 2024, when election-related event contracts weren’t legal in the U.S. until a month before the presidential vote, “there’s a much longer runway to plan” in 2026, said Benjamin Freeman, head of politics growth at Kalshi.
The midterms present platforms with a chance to remind people that they offer far more than sports, while the bulk of trading volume still derives from those contests.
The Fall Will Separate Winners
Seni Thomas treated the NFL season as a test for newer platforms, with “This NFL cycle is the real key, make or break” serving as the stakes for many newer companies, he said.
Thomas says the platforms are scrambling to get ready, and they will keep doing it as long as sports betting accounts for most of the trading on those exchanges.
The season of decline will test which platforms can endure the pressure of growth against those that cannot. The issue at hand is whether the established players can keep their lead while lesser exchanges increase their share.
Wednesday marks the opening of the NFL season. The midterms begin simultaneously. These prediction markets have grown larger than ever before, and the coming weeks will reveal whether they can keep their current pace or lose it.
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