Football Traders Are Moving Away From Sportsbooks Towards Prediction Platforms And Understandably So

Something significant seems to be happening at the edges of sports betting, especially as the world’s most-watched football tournaments are drawing in a new type of participant. These individuals do not want odds set by a bookmaker, nor do they want to wait for settlements; instead, they have become increasingly comfortable with on-chain infrastructure as their core mechanism for getting paid. 

In this regard, it bears mentioning that total notional trading volumes have soared and reached figures that would have been impossible to digest even as recently as 2022. Similarly, with Polymarket completing its CFTC-licensed US rollout late last year and Kalshi’s valuation doubling to $11 billion over the same period, it is clear that prediction markets are defining infrastructure plays and are competing with the same brand recognition as major sportsbooks.

Football sits at the center of this growth, and the upcoming 2026 World Cup is amplifying the trend in ways that are already measurable. Research published earlier this month suggests 70% of viewers plan to place a bet during the competition, with 66% identifying as first-timers. 

These are not returning sportsbook customers choosing between platforms they already know, but a new category of participant, entering the market through whichever channel offers the clearest experience (and arriving with $3.1 billion in projected US wagering behind them).

What traders need, actually

As soon as first-time participants enter the space, they discover quickly the structural limitations of traditional sportsbooks. Odds are proprietary and opaque, settlement timelines are friction-inducing, and worst of all, in-play market access is limited. In fact, the range of available markets on a single match rarely extends beyond the most popular outcomes. 

These constraints are features of most existing sportsbooks and are designed to serve the house, not the participant. Prediction markets, by contrast, set prices through participant consensus, settle rapidly or in real time, and offer market depth that scales with community interest. The deeper the participant pool, the more granular the market architecture can become.

This distinction matters most for football traders engaging across a full tournament rather than a single match. The World Cup’s 104-match format, played across six weeks, creates a sustained trading environment that rewards platforms with comprehensive coverage. A trader following Argentina through the bracket, tracking Lamine Yamal’s goal contributions, or positioning on group-stage outcomes for multiple qualifying nations needs access to markets that remain liquid and intelligently priced through the entire competition. 

Sportsbooks, built for high-volume single-event action, are not designed for that type of longitudinal engagement, and this is exactly where offerings like Pred come into the picture.

What’s on offer?

As a peer-to-peer sports prediction exchange built on Base, Pred’s trades are matched directly between users with no house edge and no limits on winners. If that wasn’t enough, execution speeds are designed to be under 200 milliseconds, allowing traders to operate effectively in live, fast-moving markets.

To reduce onboarding friction, Pred integrates Base Paymaster credits to enable gasless transactions, creating a seamless experience comparable to web2 platforms while maintaining on-chain transparency. 

Furthermore, unlike traditional sportsbooks that profit from user losses, Pred operates on a volume-based fee model, aligning platform incentives with trader success. The consequence is that younger, more tech-native users (who increasingly view prediction markets as financial instruments rather than betting platforms) can harness the power of the ecosystem more seamlessly.

Lastly, the platform differentiates itself from similar offerings through its liquidity model, presenting a 6% annual yield on deposits along with incentives for users who contribute to market depth through competitive limit orders. 

A changing landscape

The $5.47 billion combined wagering forecast for the 2026 World Cup (spanning regulated on-chain and licensed fiat channels) represents a market that has structurally outgrown the sportsbook model. In all of this, the platforms that will define this category are not the ones that arrived earliest, but the ones that were built for the type of trader this era is producing, i.e., data-oriented, tournament-aware, and unwilling to trade market depth for convenience. Pred is building for exactly that participant. 

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