Bernstein anticipates that the proportion of prediction market volume originating from sports will drop to 38% by the year 2035, while cryptocurrencies, stocks, and raw materials expand to 49%.
Yearly trading volume across prediction platforms might hit $10 trillion by 2035, climbing from a projected $410 billion in 2026, based on a report from analysts at brokerage and research company Bernstein.
In a Tuesday communication sent to clients, a team of analysts headed by Gautam Chhugani projected that trading activity will compound by roughly 70% each year between 2025 and 2035, following an expansion in sector-wide activity from approximately $50 billion in 2025 to near $300 billion in 2026 up to August.
The projection from Bernstein shows financial instruments like cryptocurrencies, equities, and commodities increasing from about 12% of total volume in 2025 to 49% by 2035, surpassing sports to become the dominant sector. Conversely, the portion attributed to sports is projected to decline from 61% down to 38% throughout the corresponding timeframe.
The analysts wrote that they anticipate novel offerings such as KPI markets, which enable participants to trade specific corporate performance indicators—including manufacturing output, product shipments, or user acquisition numbers—rather than the equity value itself. They added that perpetual futures are also branching out from digital assets into commodities and single-stock perpetual contracts.
Crypto and commodities widen the market
As noted by Bernstein’s research team, this transition is already apparent in trading figures from 2026. Short-term contracts involving digital assets and commodities, such as 15-minute bitcoin price markets, have driven this year’s growth, whereas sports-related activity spiked around the FIFA World Cup and sustained peak levels following the conclusion of the event.
The report highlighted that digital currency’s percentage of volume on Kalshi climbed from under 5% at the start of January to approximately 20% by August. Furthermore, trading activity in commodities increased from under $2 million in 2025 to roughly $590 million for the year-to-date in 2026, which includes $410 million during August alone. Kalshi captured nearly 60% of total sector volume through the month of August, improving from 35% in 2025.
Data from Bernstein indicates that on Polymarket, sports-related agreements represented about 52% of worldwide volume for the 2026 year-to-date period, compared to 39% during 2025, while political topics made up 22%, dropping from 32%. Cryptocurrencies represented roughly 21% of the global volume on Polymarket during this timeframe.
Bernstein values the total addressable market for financial-asset contracts at close to $700 trillion for 2025, which is expected to grow to $900 trillion by 2035. Their forecasting model projects that prediction markets will absorb 0.5% of that addressable pool by 2035, generating roughly $4.7 trillion in yearly volume.
Regarding regulatory matters, Bernstein noted that definitive legal certainty for American sports prediction platforms is improbable before 2027 or 2028, pointing to conflicting judicial rulings concerning federal oversight of derivatives versus state-level gaming regulators.
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-09-22-bernstein-sees-annual-prediction-market-volumes-hitting-10-trillion-by-2035-as-financial-assets-overtake-sports-416030.
