Macquarie sees prediction market turnover reaching $187 billion in 2026, with one platform taking 63% of sports contracts

Macquarie says prediction markets are moving from niche volume to something a lot closer to mainstream betting economics. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks, the immediate issue is not just growth — it is concentration, product classification, and the fact that the same flow can look very different depending on the jurisdiction.

1. Macquarie forecasts total trading volume on prediction exchanges will hit $187 billion in 2026, up from $22 billion in 2025. That is an 8.5x increase in one year, which is the sort of number that tends to get compliance teams and regulators reading the same spreadsheet for different reasons.
2. September data already points in that direction: $20.1 billion in monthly volume, up 1079% year over year. The source frames this as evidence that the market is accelerating fast rather than just posting a one-off spike.
3. Macquarie also says one operator accounts for 63% of sports contract volume. The report does not name the platform, saying it is likely either Polymarket or Kalshi. Either way, that level of concentration points to a winner-takes-most market where liquidity attracts more liquidity.
4. Traditional sportsbook operators are still small in this segment: DraftKings is at about 4% and FanDuel at about 3% of prediction market volume. Combined, they are below 7%, despite their scale in conventional betting.
5. Macquarie lists three growth drivers: more liquidity, a wider range of markets, and greater user awareness. In practice, those are the ingredients that can turn a product category from experimental into something payment providers have to support at scale — with a separate compliance view for each jurisdiction.

The regulatory backdrop is the part payment teams cannot ignore. The source cites more than 30 lawsuits in the United States over whether these contracts should be classified as swaps or bets, which is exactly the kind of uncertainty that complicates onboarding, monitoring, and bank partner conversations.