Kalshi at $3.5B/year
Jan-Erik Asplund
TL;DR: The World Cup and newly launched crypto perpetual futures have pushed Kalshi past $1B/day in trading volume. But it now faces competition from Polymarket launching in the US and key partner Robinhood routing volume to its own exchange. Sacra estimates Kalshi hit $3.5B in annualized revenue in June 2026, up from $735M in 2025. For more, check out our full report and dataset on Kalshi.
We first covered Kalshi (May 2025) as the CFTC-regulated counterpart to Polymarket (Nov 2025) in the prediction markets, as well as looking at the broader sports betting & crypto Gen Z degen economy.
We also interviewed Underdog Fantasy co-founder Trevor John to better understand the sports betting-ification of both fantasy sports & prediction markets.
Key points via Sacra AI:
- While Kalshi's first breakout market was politics, peaking at roughly 90% of volume around the 2024 Trump election, sports now makes up roughly 80% of volume with parlays specifically hitting ~50% of total volume during the World Cup from roughly ~2% pre-tournament, unlocking the 2-5x revenue bet type where each leg of the parlay generates its own fees, with parlays driving 50%+ of revenue at DraftKings (NASDAQ: DKNG) which hit $6B in revenue in 2025 revenue, up 27% YoY, valued at $12.75B for a 2.1x multiple.
- At $13B in trading volume across Kalshi ($7B) & Polymarket ($6B) in June, the World Cup has handily beaten the 2024 election (~$5B) and the 2026 NCAA tournament (~$3B) as the biggest betting & prediction market event in history, with Sacra estimating that Kalshi hit $3.5B in annualized revenue in June 2026, up from $735M in 2025 (+172% YoY), on ~$30B in total June trading volume, in talks to raise a new round at a $40B valuation for a roughly 11x multiple.
- After dominating the US domestic market from 2020 to 2025 as the only CFTC-regulated prediction market and the regulators’ ban of Polymarket, Kalshi now faces real competition at home after Polymarket launched in the US (May 2026) attacking Kalshi’s core market of sports trades, armed with exclusive MLB and MLS partnerships and hitting $1B in annualized revenue in June 2026 on $12.4B in volume, in talks to raise at a $15B valuation for a 15x multiple.
- Kalshi's concentration in sports prediction markets has resulted in a blended take rate on event contracts nearly 2x Polymarket's (~1.2% vs. ~0.67%), with Polymarket’s catching up as its sports volume grows to 40%+ similarly based off the World Cup, as operators vary take rates from market to market based on considerations like regulatory optics (Polymarket’s 0% take rate on geopolitics & world events), growth (Kalshi’s new zero-fee crypto perps at ~$7B in monthly volume) and liquidity.
- Kalshi partnered up with Robinhood (25% of volume), Coinbase, Interactive Brokers, and Webull to drive distribution, but now Robinhood has launched its own CFTC-licensed exchange & is now routing its highest-volume World Cup match outcome contracts away from Kalshi, part of the broader frenemy dynamic playing out across the category as prediction markets become a feature every major platform wants to own rather than distribute, with DraftKings acquiring Railbird for its own CFTC license & Meta building a prediction market called Arena to leverage its 3.5B daily active users.
For more, check out this other research from our platform:
- Kalshi (dataset)
- Polymarket (dataset)
- Polymarket at $375M/year
- Polymarket vs Kalshi
- Trevor John, co-founder of Underdog Fantasy, on the business model of fantasy sports
- Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Kraken, on building the Nasdaq of crypto
- Whatnot at $359M/yr
- David Ripley, COO of Kraken, on the future of cryptocurrency exchanges
- Duncan Cock Foster, co-founder of Nifty Gateway, on NFTs as luxury goods
- Stan vs Whop
- Underdog Fantasy
- eToro vs Robinhood
