Bernstein raises prediction market forecast to $10 trillion annually by 2035

Wall Street's forecast for prediction markets just got ten times bigger. Bernstein now projects the industry will handle $10 trillion a year in trading volume by 2035, roughly 24 times the $410 billion it expects the market to process this year and 10 times its original forecast for 2030.

Bernstein's analysts, led by Gautam Chhugani, said in a note to clients on Tuesday that they expect volumes to compound at roughly 70% a year through 2035. Industry-wide trading already grew from about $50 billion in 2025 to roughly $300 billion in the first eight months of 2026.

Sports made up 61% of trading volume in 2025, and Bernstein expects that to fall to 38% by 2035. Contracts tied to crypto, stocks, and commodities, grouped together as "financial assets," are set to grow from 12% to 49% of the market, making them the largest category for the first time.

"We expect new products such as KPI markets, which allow users to trade a single corporate metric, such as production, deliveries, or subscriber growth, rather than the stock price itself," the analysts wrote.

That means betting on whether a company ships more units this quarter, without having to buy or short its stock. "Further, perp futures are expanding from crypto to commodities and single stock perps," they added—perpetual futures being contracts with no expiration date, so a trader can hold a position indefinitely instead of it closing out on a set day.

Prediction markets let people trade "yes" or "no" contracts on whether something will happen, from a Federal Reserve rate decision to a company's earnings. Each contract settles at $1 if the event occurs and $0 if it doesn't, so the price itself becomes a running bet on the odds.

Crypto's share of Kalshi's volume jumped from under 5% in January to about 20% in August. Commodity trading on the platform grew from less than $2 million in all of 2025 to roughly $590 million so far in 2026, including $410 million in August alone. Kalshi now controls about 60% of industry volume, up from 35% a year ago.

Back in April, Bernstein projected prediction markets would reach a comparatively modest $1 trillion by 2030, up from $51 billion in 2025. At the time, they argued growth would come less from bigger sports bets and more from institutions moving in.

"We expect an institutional market to develop around economics, business, and political contracts, as investors seek more direct and discrete exposure to events," they wrote at the time. They also pointed to the plumbing behind the shift: "Increasing regulatory clarity at the federal level...is expanding the addressable market, while blockchain-based tokenization and integration with crypto markets is enabling global liquidity, long-tail event creation and participation from institutions."

The deadline for that 10X growth has stretched from 2030 to 2035. Whatever Bernstein tracked in the data over the summer made its own April forecast look conservative.

Bernstein estimates crypto, stocks, and commodities alone represent a $700 trillion pool of possible bets today, growing to $900 trillion by 2035. Even if prediction markets capture just 0.5% of that pool, it works out to $4.7 trillion a year in volume on financial contracts alone, without counting a single sports wager.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is already positioning for that shift. "We're already seeing other categories like crypto taking a disproportionate share," he told CNBC this week. "I think within a few years, sports will actually be in the minority, similar to active trading at large."

Its own event-contract business posted a tenfold jump in revenue, to $156 million in the second quarter of 2026. Bernstein has separately projected prediction markets to become a meaningful earner for Robinhood this year as crypto categories keep taking a bigger share of the platform's trading.

Bernstein said firm regulatory clarity for U.S. sports prediction markets is unlikely before 2027 or 2028, citing conflicting court rulings over whether these contracts count as federally regulated derivatives or state-regulated gambling.

Until that gets resolved, the industry is on pace to close 2026 at $410 billion in volume, a number Bernstein now treats as a floor, not a ceiling.