TLDR
- Bloomberg reported Kalshi parlay bettors lost $294 million this year, but that number blends two very different groups of traders
- When split apart, ordinary parlay buyers lost 16.6 cents per dollar on normal days and 35 cents per dollar during the World Cup final
- The other side, people betting against parlays, made 21 cents per dollar, but much of that reflects buyers cashing out early rather than fresh bets
- Buyer losses over the two week study period were higher than what legal sportsbooks typically keep on parlay bets
- Kalshi’s app does not let regular users bet against someone else’s parlay directly, that activity mostly happens through professional trading tools
Kalshi is a prediction market where people can trade on the outcome of events, including sports. One popular product is called a combo, which works like a parlay bet. A combo only pays out if every prediction inside it comes true.
Bloomberg reported in July that bettors lost a net $294 million on these combo markets so far this year. Gambling Insider rebuilt that same calculation and confirmed the number was accurate.
But the outlet found that number hides a bigger story. The $294 million figure blends two separate groups of traders into one average.
Two Groups, Two Different Outcomes
The first group is parlay buyers. These are people betting that a combo will hit, similar to filling out a bet slip at a sportsbook.
The second group takes the opposite side. They bet that the combo will miss, often paying a high price for a small potential payout.
Gambling Insider studied every trade across roughly 4.6 million combo markets that settled between July 14 and July 27. The results showed the two groups had very different results.
Parlay buyers staked $226 million and lost $79 million. That works out to 35 cents lost for every dollar staked, or 16.6 cents per dollar if the World Cup final is set aside.
The other side staked $204 million and won $43 million, a gain of 21 cents per dollar. Blending both groups together produces the smaller 8.4 cent loss figure that matches the original headline number.
Why the Blended Number Is Misleading
Averaging the two groups makes the product look better than it is for the typical customer. It combines the buyer’s losses with the winnings of the side betting against them.
Market makers, the professional traders who set prices, have argued that competition among them gives bettors a fair deal. On the blended number, that argument appears to hold up against sportsbook fees.
But once buyers are looked at on their own, their losses were higher than what sportsbooks report keeping on parlay bets, based on filings from New Jersey and Maryland gambling regulators.
Not all of the winning side’s activity is a fresh bet against a parlay. Some of it comes from buyers selling their own combo early to lock in a smaller, safer payout before the game ends.
On one sample day, 40 percent of the winning side’s trades happened within an hour of a market settling. Only 4 percent of buyer trades happened in that same window.
That pattern suggests people were closing out positions as games finished rather than placing new bets. Still, a smaller portion of trades happened well before any outcome was known, which looks more like a deliberate bet against a parlay.
Kalshi’s app does not include a simple button letting a customer bet against someone else’s parlay. Placing that kind of trade requires using the exchange’s programming interface, which is mostly used by professional traders and automated software.
The side betting against parlays did face real risk during the study period. On July 18, the day before the World Cup final, that side lost $10.7 million.
A week later, when several favored outcomes failed to happen, the same side made $38.9 million in a single day. That was more than its entire stake for that day.
