By the Numbers: A Tournament-Sized Trading Floor
That $20 billion figure is for January through the end of the tournament, not just the five weeks of actual games. Of that total, about $5.7 billion was wagered during the tournament itself, with World Cup-themed contracts making up about 63% of all prediction-market activity in that period, according to Chainalysis’s July 30 report.
It was a steady climb, not a steep one. In the qualifying stretch, daily volume was around $50 million in January before spiking past $100 million in the lead-up to kickoff and settling around $250 million once group stage matches started on June 11. The final was the biggest day by far, with Spain narrowly beating Argentina and trading over $300 million.
Over 400,000 wallets were involved during the competition, putting the prediction markets featured in the tournament on the same level as the busiest periods seen by cryptocurrency exchanges during a month.
Where were the betters from?
Participants were tracked on every continent except Antarctica, while North America and China accounted for the highest volume of trading activity among countries. Canada, Thailand, and the UK closed the top five. An important point, though, is that Chainalysis makes it clear that its geolocation approach for wallets has some degree of uncertainty, especially when it comes to the use of VPNs and other privacy tools that protect the user’s location, thus making the filled geolocation rankings show attribution but not actual current location.
Note that the winners accounted for a larger share of participants than losers, as it turned out that 55% of the participants made a profit as a result of the tournament. Most importantly, out of the total number of participants in the tournament, over 80% of people had the previous experience of having participated in prediction markets before the start of the World Cup.
The Wildest Bets and the Biggest Single Payout
Not every market tracked a scoreline. One of the most peculiar betting options offered involved Cristiano Ronaldo, with bettors winning their $49 million bet based on whether he cried after the final whistle of his last World Cup. At the same time, there were other significant losses recorded during the championship. Information from Arkham Intelligence suggests that the trader known as gud.hl has made a $5.2million stake on Argentina’s victory during the tournament, mostly at Polymarket. However, Spain’s 1-0 final victory put an end to the bet, which generated significant profits on Hyperliquid for the trader.
Illicit Exposure Stayed Small, But Not Zero
Roughly 3,700 wallets with links to illicit activity took part in World Cup markets, totalling less than 1% of total participants. About $5.4 million was traced in flows connected to sanctioned entities and other illicit sources, with the bulk originating from Huobi, the exchange now operating as HTX. Smaller amounts came from scam-linked wallets and wallets holding stolen funds.
The timing is notable: the UK placed sanctions on Huobi Global in late May due to Russia-related restrictions. At the same time, it confirmed that HTX was considered part of this sanction due to shared ownership. Since then, the EU has put HTX on the list of organizations facing transaction prohibitions starting August 23.
The statistics provided by Chainalysis show how these wallets are connected with the sources identified before. The absence of proof is very obvious in the fact that no one can say that the World Cup betting was illegal in itself. Moreover, other surveillance organizations monitored the situation in the region and indicated possible negative trends. TRM Labs reported scam wallets linked to fake ticket sales and match-fixing schemes at the beginning of the tournament, while it should be mentioned that the FBI had already published an alert listing over 30 fake FIFA-related websites.
FIFA's Own Chain Stayed Remarkably Clean
Apart from the open betting markets, FIFA experimented with on-chain fan engagement through FIFA Collect, a digital collectibles platform that runs on Avalanche. The platform managed to have $24 million in trading volume, while at the same time providing more than 100,000 match tickets, enabling fans to exchange or sell digital assets for tickets to the stadium. FIFA itself earned an estimated $6 million due to the 5% royalty from secondary sales.
Unlike the betting markets, FIFA Collect implemented user ID checks, which characterized the platform itself. Indeed, less than 0.01% of users of FIFA Collect were connected to entities that were sanctioned, which was explained by Chainalysis as an impact of FIFA Collect’s KYC procedures rather than the characteristics of the platform itself.
What It Means Going Forward
The event can be seen as an indication that blockchain technology is becoming the standard approach for the organization of major events: since ticketing, betting, and dealing of collectibles all happen on public blockchains at the same time. However, whether this practice remains widely used after the tournament is still uncertain, as FIFA Collect’s decent reputation in terms of compliance contrasts sharply with the questionable reputation of much of the betting market, indicating that regulators and operators will make efforts to have stricter identity verification in place as gambling around events continues to grow.
