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Discussed in this piece:
1) The explosive growth of combos on Kalshi, and the data behind them
2) How big combos are as a % of total notional volume on Kalshi
3) What users are actually wagering on
4) How longshot wagers have taken over
This piece is written and researched by Omar El Safy, and edited by Pet Berisha.
…But before we get into it, if you haven’t downloaded our Q1 2026 report - you should definitely do that. It’s totally free 👇️
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00 · PLATFORM CONTEXT
Combos account for $14.0B of Kalshi's $84.2B in total platform notional volume since the September 2025 launch.
That translates to 16.6% of total notional volume.
Non-exotic sports markets account for $59.2B, or 70.3%.
Everything else - politics, crypto, macro, weather, entertainment singles- accounts for $11.0B, or 13.1%.
Fig. 1 · Platform composition since launch. Exotic Parlays $14.0B (16.6%), Sports $59.2B (70.3%), Everything Else $11.0B (13.1%).
But notional volume and handle (actual cash) are different things. The notional-to-handle ratio for combos is 9.82x. The $14.0B in notional volume translates to $1.42B in real cash exchanged. Notional is the right measure for market share. Notional is the right measure for market share. Handle is the right measure for how much real cash runs through the product, which is the starting point for its economics.
What the notional figure does not show is the trajectory. The chart below plots exotic parlays as a share of weekly Kalshi notional volume since launch.
Fig. 2 · Exotic parlays' weekly share of Kalshi notional volume, Sep 2025 to Jun 2026. Grew from 0% to 26.8%.
Combos launched in September 2025; by May 2026, they account for more than a quarter of all Kalshi volumes.
One moment puts the scale in context. Super Bowl weekend, exotic combo open interest spiked to $137.9M. That single day accounted for 16.5% of Kalshi's total platform open interest.
Fig. 3 · Exotic combo open interest vs total Kalshi platform OI. Feb 8, 2026 peak: $137.9M, 16.5% of platform OI.
A note on measurement. The platform context above uses notional volume, which is the right lens for market share comparisons across Kalshi's product lines. From here, this report uses handle, actual cash exchanged, as the primary measure. Combo contracts price cheaply, many below 10¢, which inflates notional relative to real cash. The notional-to-handle ratio for combos is 9.82x.
01 · GROWTH
May 2026 ran $463M in handle. The NFL's peak month ran $50M.
The product launched during the NFL season and grew through it. December 2025 was the peak NFL month. It ran $50M in handle. When the NFL season ended, the handle did not fall. It accelerated.
Fig. 4 · Monthly handle by season with month-on-month growth rates. NFL months in orange, post-NFL in brown.
Orange bars represent months where the NFL season was ongoing. Brown bars represent ‘post-NFL season’ – aka everything after. Month-on-month growth actually accelerated in the months post the Super Bowl.
Fig. 5 · December 2025 (NFL peak, $50M) vs April 2026 ($346M) vs May 2026 ($463M).
May 2026 saw $463M in handle. That is 9.3x December's NFL peak.
Net: The product used the NFL as its launch catalyst. It did not need the NFL to grow.
02 · PRODUCT MIX
Eleven products launched. Two lead. Those two carry 96% of the handle.
Sports Multi-Game: $848M in handle, 59.7% of the total.
Cross-Category: $515M, or 36.3%.
Everything else combined: under 7%. Eight products are dormant, partly due to seasonality.
Fig. 6 · Product launch timeline with handle. Active products in orange, dormant in dark.
Here is what each of the 11 products actually are:
Fig 7. Product definitions: all 11 KXMVE exotic parlay products and their structures.
Handle By Product Category
Fig. 8 · Handle by product category since launch. Total: $1.42B. Sports Multi-game 59.7% · Cross-Category 36.3% · Entertainment <0.1% · Mentions
Share of handle volume per product category can be seen above; what the pie chart doesn't show is how 96% of this volume is sports.
Cross-Category was built to span sports, crypto, politics, and macro. In a sample of 135,426 open parlays from May 2026, 99.89% of all legs were sports. The product name is broad. The actual usage is almost entirely sports. Combined, Sports Multi-Game and Cross-Category account for roughly 99.8% of exotic combo volume. And both are, in practice, sports products.
Net: Combos are sports market. The cross-domain thesis has not materialised in eight months of data.
Demand isn’t just about handle; it’s also about how much of the inventory actually trades. Cross-Category places 94% of what it lists. CBB Championship placed 100%. Mention placed 4.9%. Most of Mention contracts expired without a single trade.
Fig. 9 · Share of listed parlay contracts that ever traded, by product category. Cross-Category 94%, Mention 4.9%.
Kalshi has generated roughly 37 million ticker combinations across the exotic product line. Most have never traded. That is a structural property of how the combo engine works. It also implies where genuine demand exists and where it does not.
Net: Cross-Category places 94% of what it lists. Mention places 5%. The gap tells you where demand actually lives.
03 · IMPLIED PROBABILITY
At launch, the average combo was priced at 5.5-to-1. Eight months later, it is 11.5-to-1.
Price is implied probability in prediction markets. A contract at 15¢ means a 15% chance. At launch, the median exotic combo was priced at roughly 15% implied probability, roughly a 5.5/1 shot. By May 2026, it had drifted to 8%, close to 11.5/1. Both mean and median have moved lower, with consumers chasing higher multiples on their combos.
Fig. 10 · Mean and median implied probability per trade, weekly since launch. 15.0% at launch to 8% by June 2026.
The implied probability drift is mostly structural, then amplified by user behaviour. Kalshi has been rolling out combo templates with more legs, and every extra leg lowers the chance of winning.
You can see it in the cross‑section: Sports Multi‑Game parlays, which tend to stack more games, average roughly 9% implied probability, while NBA single‑game parlays sit closer to 19%. Both product categories are available to the same traders; what changes is how many outcomes each template nudges them to stuff into a single ticket.
Fig. 11 · mean and median implied probability by product. Range: CBB Championship ~3% to Mention ~54%.
Mention markets are the outlier. The average implied probability is 54%, but the median is 20%. A handful of trades pull the mean up. The gap between mean and median tells you the typical Mention trade doesn’t look like a typical sports parlay.
Net: Product category design shapes the price, but traders still decide which product to use and how many legs to add.
04 · LONGSHOT DRIFT
Moonshot wagers draw the most users. They draw 1% of the money.
Kalshi's combo contracts can price below 1¢, which lets traders build ultra‑longshot parlays that show up at ranges like 0.5¢ or 0.8¢, which are closer to 150‑to‑1 or 200‑to‑1 shots.
Fig. 12 · Trade count by individual price point, 0.1¢ to 99¢. The 0.1¢-0.9¢ = 8.9% of all trades. Coin flip (50c) = 0.6%.
Sub-1¢ contracts account for 8.9% of all trades, the single largest bar on the chart. For comparison, the coin flip at 50¢ accounts for 0.51%. More trades print below a single ¢ than on every price above 50¢ combined.
Fig. 13 · Trade distribution by implied probability range. Bucket covers a trading range.
Grouping the same trades into ranges sharpens the picture. One trade in five is an extreme longshot priced between 0 and 2 ¢ 78% of all trades price below 30 ¢. Favourites, anything from 51 ¢ to 99 ¢, account for just 6.4% of trades.
By trade count, this is a lottery-ticket market.
By handle, it is something else entirely.
Fig. 14 · Handle by individual price point, 0.1c to 99c. Peaks at 26c ($23.5M).
Sub-1¢ trades account for 8.9% of all transactions, but only 1.3% of all cash exchanged. The 0-2 ¢ bucket (Fig. 13) holds 20.1% of trades and 4.6% of handle. One trade in five is an extreme longshot.
The handle does not peak at the floor. It peaks at 26 ¢, roughly 3-to-1 odds, at $24.3M. The bulk of cash concentrates across the 15-to-35-¢ range. The distribution inverts entirely when you switch from counting trades to counting cash.
The chart below [Fig 15] plots each trade-size bucket twice: share of all trades and share of total cash exchanged.
Fig. 15 · Trade-size bucket in USDs: share of trades (orange) vs share of handle (dark). 3.4% of trades over $200 drive 54% of all cash. Trade size = cash $ spent per order (contracts × price). Buckets widen to reflect the right-skewed distribution.
The crowd is at the cheap end. The money is not. 71% of bets are under $20 and account for 11% of total handle. The top 3.4% of bets, anything over $200, drive 54% of every dollar.
Fig. 16 · Share of trades at 0.1¢-0.9¢ by month. Sep 2025: 5.7%. May 2026: 12%.
Sub-cent trades have roughly doubled as a share of activity, from about 6% in late 2025 to 12 % by May 2026. Dipping around the time of the Super Bowl. To then regain thereafter
By dollars wagered, most of the money sits around 3‑to‑1 odds in combos. 54% of the dollars traded on combos can be attributed to users wagering $200 or more per combo.
05 · FEES
$63M in estimated fees. 96% of it from two product categories
Kalshi does not publish fee revenue by product. Using the published taker-fee formula applied trade-by-trade across all 30 million transactions, the estimate is $63M, roughly 4.51% of handle, since combos launched in September 2025.
Sportico independently calculated total parlay hold at 14.7% of handle and 10.2% excluding fees, implying a fee component of 4.5%. Both figures land within rounding of each other.
The hold structure on Kalshi's combo product splits three ways.
The exchange takes approximately 4.5% in fees.
Institutional market makers who set RFQ prices collect the remaining hold.
Retail bettors, as takers in that structure, are on the losing side of the spread.
At 14.7% total hold on $1.42B in handle, the implied aggregate transfer from bettors to makers and the exchange since launch is roughly $200M.
Fig. 17 · Estimated fee revenue by product. Sports Multi-Game $35.9M, Cross-Category $21.4M, all others under $3M combined.
Sports Multi-Game: $38.1M in estimated fees. Cross-Category: $22.3M.
The other nine product categories combined: under $3M.
WHAT TO WATCH
Over the next year, here are three things we are looking at:
World Cup scale. FIFA World Cup 2026 is the first real test of how big Parlays can get for Kalshi when the world is watching. June 11 to July 19. 104 matches. Kalshi will have ~200‑plus World Cup single‑event markets live.
NFL year two. September 17 is the one‑year mark. Does October 2026 clear $463M(peak month handle)?
Implied probability. Median implied probability is at 8% today and still moving. At 8-10%, the user base has found its natural range and the product keeps its identity as a prediction market. But bettors have consistently demonstrated a pull toward longer odds. Even within existing templates, traders tend to stack more legs, not fewer.
Methodology, Data and sources:
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