Prediction markets hit the mainstream in 2024 thanks to contracts tied to that year's presidential contest. Political watchers often treat Labor Day as the unofficial start of midterm campaigning, which puts the elections on the same crowded calendar as football and the baseball postseason.
This year's NFL slate opened Wednesday night with the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks meeting again in a replay of the 2026 Super Bowl. Trading first started surging in September 2025 when the NFL returned, and it hasn't cooled since. Now, the forces that drew people in separately - the presidential election and the NFL - are overlapping for months.
"You have a bit of a supercycle occurring right now within the prediction markets," said JB Mackenzie, who oversees futures and prediction markets at Robinhood. Beyond sports, traders are also leaning into economic contracts that hinge on where a hard-to-read Federal Reserve may set interest rates next week.
Two incumbents dominate while smaller exchanges try to grab share, and everyone is hustling for the fall. Preparations will keep coming as long as most activity still originates in sports, said EDGE Markets CEO Seni Thomas, who also called this NFL run "the real key, make or break" for many upstarts.
Rothera, built through a joint venture of Susquehanna International Group and Robinhood, went live ahead of this summer's FIFA World Cup and saw volumes swell after launch. "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."
Novig, a platform that lists only sports contracts, kicked off its NFL campaign Wednesday with an ad starring actress Sydney Sweeney. ProphetX, which debuted in June focusing on sports-related contracts, rebuilt its consumer app and is prioritizing liquidity during the NFL season. "Our revenue doubled from June to August," said co-founder and CEO Dean Sisun. "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."
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Polymarket rolled out an ad on Tuesday featuring LeBron James, Eli Manning and Derek Jeter for its football push, and introduced a U.S. product that lets users chat, share ideas, and place trades together. Kalshi logged $2.3 billion of trading on Saturday as college football kicked off, and launched a tool for speculators who traded 2025 NFL season markets to check how their positions did leading into this season's opening. It also added more team partnerships ahead of October's MLB playoffs.
Fast growth has come with hiccups. Polymarket's U.S. platform was down for much of Saturday during the college football opener, and accounts with losses tied to the outage were refunded. Kalshi prematurely shut down its University of Michigan game market, briefly disbursing payouts as though Western Michigan had sprung an upset, before reversing the error and settling the book correctly.
Even as they expand into sports, the platforms are battling states in court that claim these sports event contracts are gambling and should be policed by state regulators instead of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "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, Polymarket's president of sports business development, In August, ahead of unveiling a partnership with the New York Yankees. Political markets have also been visible in public - Kalshi even advertised 2024 presidential odds on a billboard opposite the Nasdaq MarketSite last November.
Midterms give platforms a chance to show they're more than just sports, even if the bulk of trading still comes from those contests. Kalshi launched a midterm hub in July with race data across the country and is planning an in-person election-night event while exploring how best to display shifting odds as results arrive, said Benjamin Freeman, Kalshi's head of politics growth. Unlike 2024, when U.S. election contracts were only permitted about a month before the presidential vote, "there's a much longer runway to plan" in 2026, Freeman said.
ProphetX intends to add midterm markets, and Robinhood is showcasing Rothera's election-related contracts to its brokerage users. As Mackenzie put it, the action may skew toward the NFL week by week, but prediction markets tend to follow the news cycle and what traders want.
If you track prediction markets alongside your investments, expect a fall full of sports-driven spikes, election milestones, new features, and the occasional tech or settlement misstep. The bigger story is how this attention translates into more liquid markets across football, college sports, October baseball, and the midterms - all converging on your screen over a few months.
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