Last weekend, golf fans watched Rory McIlroy become just the fourth player in the sport’s history to win the Masters in consecutive years.
On the other hand, sports bettors wagered on the event. And they bet a lot. However, this year’s Masters tournament got a ton of traction on prediction markets.
According to Front Row Sports, Kalshi users wagered $545 million on the tournament’s outcome. The 2026 Masters had the second-largest trading volume ever on the platform. Only the 2024 U.S. presidential election had more action.
The recent numbers show the growing popularity of prediction market platforms. Users wagered $460 million on the winner alone.
In some ways, the growing popularity adds fuel to the fire that is the prediction market legal battle. State gaming regulators are in a jurisdictional battle with the federal government.
Regardless of the lawsuits’ outcome, prediction markets aren’t going anywhere. But the Masters’ popularity among users gives a clear case study for why poker tournaments could be Kalshi’s next big hit.
Golf And Poker Both Have Several “Trading” Days
Regardless of its eventual popularity, it’s clear Kalshi is aware the poker industry is at least a key user demographic.
Last September, Kalshi signed Daniel Negreanu to an ambassadorship deal. The partnership marked the first inkling of prediction market interest in the poker world.
At first, it was possible that Kalshi simply wanted a marketing lane to poker players. They are more likely than other demographics to use the platform.
But in a recent YouTube video, Negreanu said he was pushing for Kalshi to offer more poker-related markets.
“One of the things I’ve been trying to get them to do is put up some poker markets,” he said in a recent YouTube video. “Any time you put up markets, you have to go through the legalese and make sure that they make sense.”
Currently, the only poker market on the platform is whether the 2026 World Series of Poker main event cracks 10,000 players. But what if they started markets about which player wins the 2026 WSOP main event?
Then, Kalshi has several markets on different players with real-time price movements as traders see whether a player’s chip stack is increasing or decreasing. Moreover, Kalshi users have roughly two weeks to consistently trade in and out of positions.
That’s part of the draw for Masters tournament prediction betting. There are four days of golf from sunup to sundown. The WSOP main event offers nearly three times as many days to wager.
This year, there is a three-week break between reaching the final table and playing it. That gives users even more time to wager in the interim.
Prediction Markets Users Can Alter Exposure Throughout Tournaments
In a golf event, leaders are constantly changing. Pre-tournament favorites could be longshots with a poor first round. Thus, the likelihood of a particular golfer winning the event changes throughout the tournament.
With traditional sportsbooks, outcomes are binary and are only settled at the outcome. But on prediction markets, users can sell their positions before the outcome is final and move that money into other players.
For example, a user betting on a longshot to win at the start of the event may see that player’s price rise if he went on to finish near the top of the leaderboard on the first two days of the tournament.
Early bettors could sell their positions, or partial positions, for a profit and put money elsewhere in the field. then switch to another golfer who has a better shot at winning the tournament. The system allows traders to take multiple positions on players throughout the event. Stated differently, they are hedging.
With how quickly chip stacks fluctuate and how long some poker tournaments are, the Masters showcased exactly why these platforms might be perfect for wagering on poker tournament outcomes.
