Fresh data from the Pew Research Center offers a rare look at the real results of polymarket sports traders — and the picture looks very different from the platform’s eye-catching volume-growth numbers. Most people betting on sports through prediction markets finish the period roughly where they started. A small group hits it big. A similarly sized group takes heavy losses. Everyone else just trades actively without getting anywhere.
What Pew Actually Studied
Pew’s analysts pulled a sample of nearly 12,000 Polymarket accounts that traded the ten most-traded events of early 2026. The team then tracked those accounts’ behavior over six weeks — from May 7 to June 19. That window covered the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Final, and the opening matches of the FIFA World Cup, making it an unusually busy stretch for sports contracts.
The median account made 46 trades over six weeks and put in just over $600. By the end of the period, it was down less than $2. That’s not a rounding error masking a bigger loss elsewhere — it’s genuinely how the outcome shakes out for most people on the platform.
Sports Traders Trade the Most, But Don’t Win the Most
Of all the groups Pew studied, sports fans were the most active by far. Users focused on sports markets made a median of 69 trades over six weeks — compared with 59 for crypto traders and just 13 for those betting on politics. The size of individual trades ran higher too: roughly $9 for sports traders versus about $6 for political-market bettors and under $4 for crypto traders.
More activity didn’t translate into better results. Per Pew, 58% of all accounts closed the period within $100 of breakeven — whether up or down. Another 9% lost more than $1,000 over that span, while 7% made more than that. The bulk of traders sit near the middle, neither winning nor losing enough to meaningfully move their finances.
That lines up with what we found when we sifted through hundreds of wallets claiming consistent profits: genuinely repeatable profitable trading is rare and mostly belongs to a narrow group of specialists, not casual sports fans.
A Small Group Captures Almost All the Money
At the extremes, the split gets even more lopsided. Among the most active users — those who made 1,000 or more trades in six weeks — 33% lost more than $1,000, while 27% made roughly that much. The spread is far wider than among the general trader base, where most accounts barely move.
That pattern backs up an earlier Pew finding: the top 1% of Polymarket accounts have captured roughly three-quarters of all profit made on the platform since 2022, per Pew’s July 2026 analysis of the typical Polymarket user. Sports contracts are no exception to that pattern. Trading more often mostly just means a wider spread of outcomes, not a stronger edge.
Why Sports Trading Volume Keeps Growing Anyway
None of that has slowed sports trading’s growth. In another report Pew published this week, it recorded overall monthly volume on Kalshi and Polymarket more than doubling between May and July 2026 — from $26 billion to $53 billion — with sports contracts driving most of that growth, according to Pew’s September 2026 breakdown of volume. Sports now makes up the largest share on both platforms, ahead of politics and crypto combined.
Timing with major tournaments explains part of the spike. June and July covered the FIFA World Cup, and Kalshi’s sports trading volume alone topped $31 billion that month. Volume typically spikes hard around marquee tournaments and drops off once they end — which looks more like betting on entertainment than a shift toward serious investing.
What It Means If You Trade Sports Markets
Pew’s numbers point to one thing: most people using these platforms to bet on sports are spending money on entertainment, not building an extra income stream. A situation where $600 invested turns into a $2 loss over six weeks looks a lot more like the cost of following a season closely than a trading strategy that paid off.
That doesn’t mean an edge is out of reach — it just belongs to a narrow slice of traders who treat it as an actual discipline rather than a hobby. Moving out of the 58% who just break even and into the smaller group with consistent profit still comes down to the basics: track your actual results, size positions deliberately, and study line movement instead of reacting to it after the fact. Our breakdown of betting strategies that actually work on Polymarket, and our guide to reading leaderboards and evaluating a market correctly, go into more detail on how the profitable minority’s approach differs from everyone else’s.
For most casual users, the honest takeaway from this data is simple. Sports contracts on prediction markets aren’t a secret money-maker — they’re ordinary sports betting: an engaging activity that’s easy to confuse with genuine skill, and one that rarely becomes a reliable income source for the casual participant.
