Most Polymarket World Cup Traders Won Under $5; Five Earned $1M+

A Dune Analytics review of 194,422 addresses that traded Polymarket’s World Cup winner contract found 129,649 addresses, or 66.7%, finished with losses and 64,773 recorded profits. The review covers trades tied to the tournament champion on Polymarket.

Polymarket’s champion market recorded roughly $4.28 billion in volume and rival Kalshi about $1.29 billion, for a combined $5.57 billion on contracts linked to the tournament winner. An industry estimate put prediction-market activity at about 27% of legal U.S. sports-betting volume during the World Cup, up from about 9% at the start of the year. The tournament featured 48 teams and 104 matches across the United States, Canada and Mexico, enabling platforms to list many outcome and player markets throughout the event.

Most individual gains and losses were small. More than 114,000 addresses lost less than $100, averaging $9.34 per losing address. Nearly 58,000 profitable addresses earned an average of $4.85. Larger positions were concentrated in far fewer wallets: 369 wallets lost between $5,000 and $10,000, 375 lost between $10,000 and $100,000, and 43 addresses lost more than $100,000 each, generating about $15.19 million in combined losses and averaging roughly $353,000 per large-losing account.

On the profit side, 54 addresses earned more than $100,000 each, collecting about $22.3 million in total and averaging roughly $413,000 apiece. A crypto researcher identified five accounts-named asparagus2012, Allezpapa, yamal19, thesingularityisnear and wco26-that each earned more than $1 million.

Kyle Sonlin, president and co-founder of Global Settlement Network, noted that the concentration of large returns among a small number of traders can reflect differences in information, technology and capital.

Industry backers described growing interest in prediction markets from commercial users. Rob Hadick, a general partner at Dragonfly, noted companies are exploring large trades tied to policy and regulatory outcomes and that some proposed block trades linked to legislative and regulatory exposure have been discussed at nine-figure sizes. Hadick said firms are considering contracts as a way to hedge outcomes that affect sales, inventory or approvals.

Platforms face a retention challenge after the World Cup: converting short-term tournament traders into users of markets tied to elections, economic data, corporate events and geopolitical outcomes. That shift raises regulatory and surveillance questions.

Kalshi contends its contracts fall under the Commodity Exchange Act and operate as a federally regulated derivatives exchange. Several states view sports-related contracts as unlicensed gambling. In July a federal judge rejected Kalshi’s bid to block New York from enforcing state gambling rules; Kalshi has appealed. Federal authorities have separately argued that exchange-traded contracts fall under Commodity Futures Trading Commission jurisdiction in other disputes.

Regulators have monitored trading tied to sensitive events. Days before the final, the CFTC opened an inquiry into a longtime White House teleprompter operator over trades linked to words a president might use; Kalshi froze the account after identifying positions with more than $90,000 in potential profit. Kalshi has added employment disclosures for certain markets, a whistleblower portal and continuous monitoring for sensitive trades.

Sonlin warned that moving into markets such as elections, interest rates and geopolitical events would require stronger identity controls, trade surveillance, position monitoring and clearer settlement standards.