Kalshi's Record NFL Weekend: $4.9bn in Volume, $32m in Fees, Takers Still Lost

Two consecutive daily records, parlays over half of everything, a $56m Cowboys-Giants market and pricing that Citizens says beat FanDuel and DraftKings on straight bets. The volume figure counts both sides of every trade.

• Kalshi's volume reached $2.426 billion on Saturday 12 September and $2.433 billion on Sunday, each a record, according to InGame's analysis of the exchange's public data
• Parlays were more than half of the total, at $1.47 billion and $1.48 billion, while straight football bets were $328.7 million and $409.9 million; the Cowboys-Giants game winner alone took $56.3 million
• Kalshi counts both maker and taker sides of every trade, and taker-side volume, the closer proxy for sportsbook handle, was $555.7 million and $596.7 million, below the $640.3 million record set on 11 July
• Fees were $15.99 million on Saturday and $16.02 million on Sunday; takers lost $2.1 million before fees and $15.2 million after
• Citizens analysts found Kalshi's implied vigorish on moneylines and totals 3% below FanDuel's and 4% below DraftKings' in Week 1, but worse on parlays

The First Full NFL Weekend Sets Two Records in Two Days

Kalshi's first weekend of the NFL regular season produced the two largest days in the exchange's history, back to back, and the detail behind the headline numbers shows where the money is coming from and who is keeping it.

According to InGame's analysis of Kalshi's data, volume on Saturday 12 September reached $2.426 billion, surpassing the previous record set on 5 September, the opening weekend of college football. On Sunday the figure was $2.433 billion. Parlays drove both days, at $1.47 billion on Saturday and $1.48 billion on Sunday, also records; straight football bets accounted for $328.7 million and $409.9 million. The largest single market was the Sunday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants, with $56.3 million traded on the winner and a further $16.3 million on the spread. On Saturday, $52.1 million was traded on Ohio State against Texas.

InGame notes that the volume figure is not a like-for-like with sportsbook handle. Kalshi counts the money put up by both the taker and the maker for every trade, and on long-odds parlays the maker, typically a professional trader or institution, puts up the large majority. Taker-side volume, the closer proxy for what recreational bettors staked, was $555.7 million on Saturday and $596.7 million on Sunday, short of the $640.3 million record from 11 July.

Fees were $15.99 million on Saturday and $16.02 million on Sunday, just below the $17.1 million record from July. Across the week, Kalshi averaged $12.1 million a day in fees; sustained for a quarter, InGame observes, that would be a billion-dollar revenue period. Takers, the side closer to recreational bettors, lost $2.1 million before fees and $15.2 million after; on parlays they lost $200,000 before fees and $4.1 million after, a better result than usual thanks to favourites winning and high-scoring games.

The Pricing Argument Has Numbers Now

Citizens analysts Jordan Bender and Isabelle Slavin tracked pre-game pricing across the Week 1 slate on Friday 11 September and found Kalshi's implied vig on moneylines and totals 3% lower than FanDuel's and 4% lower than DraftKings' across 28 data points. "As liquidity grows and spreads tighten, prediction market pricing is becoming increasingly competitive with traditional sportsbooks, creating a virtuous cycle in which better pricing attracts additional trading activity, which in turn further improves liquidity and pricing," they wrote. Parlays were the exception: on a two-leg combination of the over and the favourite across every game, Kalshi's implied vig was 23.8%, worse than the sportsbooks'. Bank of America data cited by Lisa Scherzer put total prediction market volume at a record $15.9 billion for the week, up 16%, with Kalshi at $13.1 billion.

The Volume Is Real, the Comparison Is Not, and Both Matter

Kalshi's $4.9 billion weekend will be quoted against sportsbook handle for the rest of the season, and the two are different things. Taker-side volume of about $1.15 billion across the two days is the figure to hold against FanDuel and DraftKings, and it is still enormous for a product that did not exist in this form two years ago. What the maker-heavy parlay volume shows is something else: the exchange has attracted professional liquidity providers willing to take the other side of long-odds combinations at scale, which is the market structure a sportsbook cannot replicate and the one that lets Kalshi price straight bets tighter than the incumbents. The parlay vig figure shows the limit. Where the exchange has to lean on a few makers pricing complex combinations, its edge disappears, and parlays are exactly where sportsbooks make their money.

$32 Million in Fees Is the Number the Lawsuits Are About

Every state enforcement action against Kalshi is, at bottom, about revenue that would otherwise be taxed as sports betting, and this weekend puts a figure on it. Two days of NFL and college football produced roughly $32 million in fees on an exchange that pays no state gaming tax, in states where sportsbooks on the same games pay from 6.75% to 51% of their hold. Connecticut's nine cease-and-desist orders and the CFTC's injunction motion were filed in the same week these records were set, and the record itself is the strongest argument each side has: for the states, that this is a sports betting business at scale, and for Kalshi, that its customers have already decided where they want to trade.

Kalshi has the volume of a top-tier sportsbook and the fee take of a growing exchange. The courts will decide which of those descriptions the law applies to.