Dr. Jason Kido Lopez
Assistant Professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. He researches and teaches about sports media, with a focus on athlete activism and sports-based games, including sports betting. He is the author of Redefining Sports Media (2023, Routledge) and Gaming Sports: Gambling and the Sports Media Complex (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press).
During the first of the controversial hydration breaks of the 2026 World Cup, American viewers were shown a FanDuel commercial. Later in the tournament, they saw an advertisement for Kalshi. The World Cup may be the world’s most popular sporting event, but for many American viewers, it also reflected a sports media landscape defined by pervasive commercialization, ubiquitous betting promotions, and the growing presence of prediction markets. Together, these developments encourage fans to experience the tournament not simply as a series of matches, but as a marketplace of wagering opportunities. Hydration breaks created additional commercial breaks during matches, but sportsbooks like FanDuel and prediction markets like Kalshi segment them even further by dividing matches into multiple wagerable moments. This has implications not only for gambling-related harms and match integrity, but also for how audiences understand the World Cup itself.
This relationship between the World Cup and betting is hardly new. Soccer is the world’s most popular betting sport, and the global betting handle for the 2026 World Cup is expected to approach $60 billion. What is new is the American betting landscape surrounding the 2026 tournament.Since 2018, many states have legalized some form of sports betting. Eight years later, the market has matured and expanded beyond traditional sportsbooks to include prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. These platforms allow users to speculate on sporting events alongside election results, weather events, and reality television outcomes. Understanding how betting shapes the World Cup therefore requires looking beyond conventional sportsbooks. For example, compare FanDuel, representing traditional sportsbooks, and Kalshi, representing emerging prediction markets, using the Norway/England Quarterfinal match played on July 11, 2026.
Both Kalshi and FanDuel offered bets through menu-like interfaces that organized what can be bet alongside the potential payout for a correct prediction. Kalshi includes a “sports fan mode,” which translates its probabilities into the American odds system used by sportsbooks. Although optional, this feature makes the representation of monetary risk on the two platforms remarkably similar.
Both applications’ primary representation of the game was a simple choice: who will advance to the next round? They also prominently feature common wagers, including whether regulation ends in an England win, a Norway win, or a tie; whether England would win by more than 1.5 goals; and whether the total number of goals will be over or under 2.5. These bets treat the match as a single contest with a single outcome, even if they focus on different aspects of the end result.
But neither platform stops there. They divide the match into dozens of smaller wagerable moments, inviting users to predict not just who wins, but how the game unfolds. Both applications offered proposition bets, or “prop bets.” For the Norway/England quarterfinal, these included whether both teams would score, who would score the first goal, and whether popular players like Erling Haaland and Harry Kane would record a goal. FanDuel offered many more of these wagers than Kalshi, extending betting to tackles, saves, and assists. Instead of one contest, the match becomes dozens of overlapping wagering opportunities.
Prop betting has attracted increasing scrutiny. Player-focused bets are especially controversial because they create the possibility for an individual athlete to manipulate their own stats (such as a recent case in the NBA) and many sports organizations have mobilized against them to reduce harassment from losing bettors (for example, the NCAA and MLBPA). Despite these concerns, both applications offer extensive proposition bets, particularly FanDuel.
FanDuel also prominently promotes same-game parlays,which combine multiple wagers into potentially high-risk, high-reward bets. While parlays have long been part of sports betting, same-game parlays are a more recent innovation that have become profitable for sportsbooks. One advertised parlay, for example, combined Haaland and Kane both to score with Norway advancing. Even someone unfamiliar with international soccer might recognize two of the sport’s biggest stars and be drawn to a wager on outcome that is difficult to win.
Although Kalshi recommends far fewer parlays (called “combos”), both applications present the England–Norway match as a collection of smaller betting events rather than a single contest. This logic is not entirely new; fantasy sports, office pools, and informal wagers have long focused on individual moments within games.What is new is the scale and sophistication with which sportsbooks and prediction markets organize these moments into profitable products for mass audiences.
The World Cup has always been a global betting spectacle. Furthermore, prop bets, parlays, athlete harassment, and betting scandals all predate the 2026 tournament. FanDuel and Kalshi, however, bring these practices together within a single interface. Rather than simply offering bets on the World Cup, sportsbooks and prediction markets organize the tournament into dozens of simultaneous betting options. In doing so, they encourage audiences to experience the World Cup not simply as a ninety-minute contest, but as a marketplace of predictions.
