Zigmas Pekarskas, Co-Founder and CEO of Stake Hunters, has spent over fifteen years observing the evolution of sports-betting markets, and the figures emerging from the FIFA World Cup gave him pause. Prediction markets — platforms where participants trade contracts tied to the outcome of future events — have until recently occupied a marginal position in the broader landscape of speculative finance. According to Europe Says, prediction market platforms recorded more than $30 billion in total trading volume during the tournament — a figure that places them alongside equity derivatives and commodity futures rather than in a niche corner of speculative finance.

What struck Pekarskas as much as the sheer scale was what it revealed about participant behavior. The sophisticated, high-volume operators now active in prediction markets are the same actors who have long tracked regulatory divergence across jurisdictions, and they respond to it in the same ways they always have.

That divergence is exactly what the Prediction Markets Summit Europe, scheduled for Gibraltar this November, is being organized to address. A unified regulatory framework remains elusive, and the gap between tightly governed venues and loosely governed ones is not narrowing. If anything, the World Cup data suggests it is widening — with consequences for market structure that regulators across Europe are only beginning to confront.

World Cup Figures Establish Prediction Markets as a Mainstream Financial Instrument

The scale of World Cup activity on prediction platforms was not merely large; it was structurally significant. Kalshi alone recorded approximately $27 billion in contracts during the competition, per Europe Says, and its World Cup winner market became the largest single market the platform had ever offered, reaching nearly $1.9 billion in volume. On the day of the final, the Kalshi app was downloaded more than 200,000 times. Polymarket, meanwhile, handled hundreds of millions of dollars in trading on the Argentina-Spain final.

These are not the metrics of a novelty product. They reflect a market that has developed the liquidity depth, participant diversity, and public recognition normally associated with established financial instruments. The total cross-platform figure of more than $30 billion in World Cup volume is the data point that most clearly marks the transition. Prediction markets have crossed a threshold, and the regulatory conversation in Europe is now catching up to that reality.

Gibraltar's Framework and the Classification Problem Blocking European Consensus

Gibraltar has moved faster than most jurisdictions. The territory has introduced one of Europe's first dedicated regulatory frameworks for prediction markets, with Nigel Feetham, Gibraltar's Minister for Justice, Trade and Industry, emphasizing that the jurisdiction acted while others continued to hesitate. The stated objective is to attract high-quality operators and credible businesses, prioritizing market integrity over a permissive free-for-all.

The longer-term ambition is broader. Gibraltar aims to develop its domestic framework into a model capable of achieving wider international recognition, though expanding into Asian markets is expected to present particular challenges that distinguish that region from the European and Anglo-American jurisdictions Gibraltar is more naturally positioned to influence.

The structural obstacle to a unified European framework, however, is not political will — it is classification. Genia Gurevich, an iGaming regulatory expert at Porat Group, has observed that prediction markets sit simultaneously at the intersection of sports betting, financial instruments, event trading, and digital assets. No single legal classification can be applied across all contract types. That condition creates regulatory opportunity for jurisdictions willing to define their own category, but it also creates risk, because inconsistent classification across member states is precisely what prevents harmonization and what sophisticated participants exploit.

Over-Restriction Drives Participants Away, as US Litigation Demonstrates

Barry Orr, Chief Marketing Officer at Solas Compliance and a veteran of the betting exchange sector, articulated the behavioral consequence directly: banning or excessively restricting prediction markets will not prevent consumers from using them — it will drive activity toward less regulated environments. Orr drew explicit parallels with the early regulatory skepticism surrounding betting exchanges — platforms like Betfair, which launched in 2000 and faced years of resistance from traditional bookmakers and regulators before achieving licensed status in multiple jurisdictions. That analogy carries considerable weight given how thoroughly the exchange model eventually proved its legitimacy once it found coherent regulatory footing.

The United States offers a live illustration of what happens when regulatory frameworks conflict. Operators authorized by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — the federal agency that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, including futures and options — can offer event contracts under a federal framework, but several states are attempting to classify sports-related prediction contracts as gambling under state law. The jurisdictional overlap has generated substantial litigation and may ultimately require a Supreme Court ruling to resolve.

The stakes extend beyond volume. Both Orr and Livy Milshtein, Vice President of Partnerships at Plaee, warned that professional trading firms and major liquidity providers risk crowding out smaller retail participants over time. They argued that future assessments of market development should be grounded in market quality and fairness, not trading volume alone. A market that is technically large but structurally hostile to retail participants is not a healthy market, regardless of headline figures.

Payment Access, Sector Drivers, and What November Must Begin to Settle

The risks extend beyond trading behavior. Chen Ben David, Director of Payments at Rapyd, warned that without clear regulatory frameworks, payment providers may terminate their relationships with prediction market operators entirely. That pattern has repeated across sectors that developed within legal grey areas — a dynamic familiar to both the online gambling and cryptocurrency industries, where loss of payment infrastructure repeatedly forced operators offshore. Prediction markets are not immune. Regulatory certainty, Ben David argued, is not merely a compliance preference — it is the foundation on which uninterrupted banking access and long-term business sustainability depend.

The positive case for the sector is also tangible. Milshtein identified three drivers behind its current expansion: growing consumer demand, the availability of real-time data and technology capable of supporting live trading, and the gradual emergence of trust through regulatory frameworks that are beginning to take shape. Each driver reinforces the others, but all three depend on the regulatory clarity that has so far eluded Europe as a whole.

Eventus International convened the live discussion that surfaced these tensions as a precursor to the Prediction Markets Summit Europe, set for Gibraltar on 9 and 10 November 2026. The summit will be the first European event dedicated entirely to the prediction markets sector, gathering experts across regulation, compliance, technology, payments, and market development.

Regulatory Divergence as a Market Force, Not Just a Policy Problem

Pekarskas frames the regulatory story as a market-structure problem, not merely a policy one. When one class of venues becomes more tightly governed, the divergence from less-regulated alternatives does not disappear — it sharpens, and that sharpening becomes a force in its own right, redirecting participant flow in ways that aggregate into observable patterns.

He notes that the same dynamic explains why some bettors choose Asian bookmakers — venues where less restrictive oversight, higher limits, and tighter pricing attract a particular type of high-volume participant away from the exchanges the European summit is attempting to harmonize. That migration is not incidental; it is a legible response to the regulatory map as it currently stands.

The November Gibraltar summit will convene with four key questions unresolved: how prediction markets should be legally classified across different contract types; whether payment infrastructure can be stabilized without regulatory certainty; how market integrity can be maintained as institutional participants grow more dominant; and whether liquidity and fairness for retail participants can be preserved alongside volume. These are the concrete issues the industry must begin to settle — and they will not wait for another World Cup to make the urgency plain.