Even with the 2026 World Cup boost, prediction markets lose the Brazilian regulation game

Kalshi and Polymarket were pushed into the regulatory spotlight by the 2026 World Cup, where event-linked contracts started looking a lot like sports betting with a cleaner label. In Brazil, though, the regulator has already drawn lines around sports and other public events, which matters for any high-risk operator wondering whether prediction markets can be treated as a payments-adjacent or gaming-adjacent product.

1. During the 2026 World Cup, prediction markets grew enough to put platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket at the center of an international regulatory debate. In the United States, they gained traction by offering contracts tied to match results and other future events.
2. Carlos Akira Sato, co-founder of Syscapital and a specialist in regulated markets, said these products began as a sophisticated collective-intelligence experiment: instead of polling experts, people trade contracts on future outcomes, and prices reflect the probability of an event.
3. His point is that the commercial reality has moved closer to sports betting. He said “combos” that bundle multiple outcomes in a single trade reproduce the economics of parlay-style bets: the product may be called a derivative or an event contract, but if the user risks money on a match winner and gets paid only if the result lands, the experience is very close to a bet.
4. The regulatory split is sharper in Brazil than in the US. According to Akira, the US debate is still open, with the core question being which authority should regulate these products and where a financial derivative ends and a sports bet begins.
5. Brazil has already moved in the opposite direction. Resolução CMN nº 5.298, issued in April 2026, set explicit limits on using sports, political, social, cultural, and entertainment events as underlying assets for derivatives. In plain terms: while the US is still drawing the border, Brazil has already started closing the gate.

For high-risk PSPs, the important detail is not the label on the contract but the underlying exposure. Once a product settles on public-event outcomes, it starts to resemble the same risk and compliance problem as betting, even if the front end says “derivative” instead of “wager.”