Super Bowl LX was the day prediction markets became a sports business
Kalshi handled hundreds of millions of dollars in trades on one game in February 2026, and state gambling regulators took notice.
Kivorent News desk, published , 1 min read
This is a look back at an event from . We wrote it on November 11, 2026, from the sources listed at the end.
What to know
- Kalshi processed about $871 million in trades in the run-up to and on Super Bowl Sunday, according to a Bank of America estimate reported by Fortune.
- Kalshi said volume across all markets tied to the game passed $1 billion.
- State regulators argued the contracts are sports betting under another name.
The Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots 29 to 13 in Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026. The other result that day was a number: the amount of money traded on the game through prediction markets.
The volume
Fortune reported a Bank of America estimate that Kalshi processed about $871 million in the lead-up to and on game day, most of it tied to the game itself. Kalshi told Fortune that the total across every market connected to the game exceeded $1 billion. Nearly a fifth of the game-related activity came through parlays, contracts that combine several outcomes.
On the night of the game, Kalshi's app reached second place in the US App Store. DraftKings was fifth.
The argument
Kalshi is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as an exchange offering event contracts. Its case is that customers trade against each other, and the company does not profit when they lose, which is how a sportsbook works.
State gambling regulators see it differently. A contract that pays out if a team wins looks, to them, like a sports bet that avoids state licensing and state taxes. Shares of DraftKings and FanDuel's parent company fell during this period, partly on the view that betting was shifting to prediction markets.
Why it mattered
Until this game, the case for prediction markets rested on elections and economic data, where the prices could be defended as useful forecasts. A billion dollars on a football game is harder to describe that way.
That made the regulatory question urgent, and it has not been settled. By mid-2026 there were dozens of state lawsuits and more than twenty bills in Congress, as we cover in the push to stop campaign staffers betting on their own races.
If you trade these contracts, the mechanics are the same whatever the subject. See how prediction market prices work.
This article is general information. It is not investment advice, and trading involves the risk of losing money.
Sources
- Kalshi's Super Bowl Sunday trading hits $871 million, Fortune, February 10, 2026
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