Prediction markets trading volume crossed $50 billion in a single month for the first time in June, according to Artemis data, with European regulators and US exchanges both moving to reshape how these products are governed and who can access them.
Prediction Markets Trading Volume: World Cup Boost or Lasting Shift?
Volume rose 75% from May, driven heavily by World Cup betting activity. Kalshi held the largest share with roughly $33 billion in monthly volume, followed by Polymarket at $14 billion and Rothera at about $2 billion.
The headline number flatters the sector slightly. According to CNBC’s analysis of Polymarket’s Gamma API, around 70% of all closed Polymarket markets generated less than $10,000 in trading volume each. Record platform-wide figures are being produced by a concentrated cluster of high-profile events, while the majority of individual contracts remain thinly traded and vulnerable to price swings from automated trading.
Whether the $50 billion figure can be sustained once the World Cup ends is the question the industry cannot yet answer.
Europe Tightens Its Grip on Event Contracts
The regulatory picture in Europe hardened sharply this month. Gambling regulators from nine countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium, issued a joint warning promising coordinated enforcement against platforms operating without local authorisation. They also called on sports leagues and clubs to check whether prediction market operators hold valid licences before signing commercial deals.
The securities layer carries more immediate bite for UK and EU investors. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) reminded firms that event contracts linked to an underlying asset already covered by MiFID II, the EU’s main financial markets rulebook, qualify as derivatives. Renaming a product an “event contract” does not change that classification.
The detail matters more than it might appear. Under ESMA’s public statement on binary option measures and event contracts, those products fall within national product intervention measures that permanently ban the marketing, distribution or sale of binary options to retail clients. In practice, a prediction market contract tied to, say, an equity index or interest rate would already be unlawful to offer retail investors in the EU and UK under existing rules, without any new legislation being required.
DraftKings Moves Off CME Group’s Infrastructure
DraftKings completed the launch of DKeX, its in-house prediction market exchange built on the Railbird platform it acquired last year. The company spent eight months developing the venue before migrating its event contracts away from external infrastructure. According to DeFi Rate, the move ends the company’s reliance on CME Group’s infrastructure for its prediction markets operations.
By owning the exchange, DraftKings controls the full trading stack: matching, clearing and settlement all run within the same ecosystem. That matters commercially because it allows the firm to retain the economics generated by every trade rather than paying fees to a third-party venue. CDC Gaming reports the exchange is licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US derivatives regulator.
Early adoption numbers suggest the product is landing with existing users. Since DKeX launched in mid-May, more than 30% of DraftKings Predictions customers have used the combinations feature, which lets users bundle multiple individual contracts into a single position, according to a DraftKings press release published via Business Wire on 24 June 2026.
DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, quoted in the company’s press release on Nasdaq, said DKeX ‘provides a vertically integrated foundation for DraftKings Predictions, strengthening our prediction markets content and capabilities, giving us greater control over the technology that powers those offerings, and enabling us to move faster.’ Robinhood and Coinbase have taken similar steps, bringing prediction market infrastructure in-house as volumes grew.
Cboe Pushes Prediction-Style Contracts Into Traditional Markets
Cboe is seeking approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list binary options tied to corporate performance metrics. The proposal covers more than 100 metrics across 23 companies, including Nvidia data centre revenue, Apple iPhone shipments and SpaceX revenue.
Rather than speculating on whether a share price moves after earnings, a trader would bet on whether a specific business metric clears a predefined threshold. These contracts would be listed as securities options, cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation, and distributed through the standard brokerage ecosystem, putting them on a different regulatory track from Kalshi’s contracts, which sit under CFTC rules.
Prediction markets trading volume has now breached levels that regulators on both sides of the Atlantic can no longer treat as peripheral. The SEC’s response to Cboe’s filing will be the first concrete signal of where US securities law draws the line.
