Prediction markets are competing hard for market share.
Two platforms currently lead the industry. Both have reached record-breaking trading volumes in the billions, attracted millions of users, and kept those users connected when activity spikes.
They also have something else in common.
Stream sits at the center of both user experiences.
Today, Stream powers chat and moderation for approximately 80% of the prediction market industry.
We're looking at the numbers behind the growth, and why Stream became the API powering it.
The Numbers Tell the Story
A new era has started for prediction markets.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup and NBA Playoffs put real-time infrastructure to the test. During the World Cup alone, one of the largest regulated prediction markets in the U.S. added more than 3 million new users, while trading volume exceeded $30 billion in June. A single World Cup market generated more than $1.2 billion in trading volume, and prediction markets attracted more than $700 million in wagers during the NBA Finals.
Throughout this sporting season, two of the largest platforms experienced explosive growth with Stream:
| Leading Regulated Prediction Market | 90-Day Growth Since Adoption |
|---|---|
| Monthly active users | +32,600% |
| Monthly messages | +28,400% |
| Monthly moderation events | +1,080% |
| Leading Crypto-Native Prediction Market | 90-Day Growth Since Adoption |
|---|---|
| Monthly active users | +295% |
| Monthly messages | +463% |
| Monthly moderation events | +876% |
The surge in trading was matched by an even bigger surge in in-app conversation.
During these sporting events, 20+ million messages were sent across these platforms in a single month using Stream.
At peak, Stream supported 120,000+ concurrent connections across group channels, without compromising speed or reliability.
"Prediction markets create some of the most demanding real-time environments we've seen since the days of online events during Covid peak. Millions of users open the app when the game starts, expect channels to open near instantly, and moderation has to have minimal impact on latency. That's exactly the type of challenge Stream was built for."
- Stephen Hodgetts, VP of Customer Success
Why the Largest Prediction Markets Choose Stream
Leading prediction markets rely on Stream for:
- Massive scale: Support up to 5 million concurrent connections in a single channel with sub-40ms average message latency, backed by a globally distributed, highly redundant infrastructure.
- Real-time engagement: Launch production-ready chat in weeks with rich group messaging, threads, reactions, media sharing, push notifications, and the WhatsApp and Instagram-equivalent features users now expect, without building messaging infrastructure from scratch.
- Moderation before content spreads: AI-powered text and image moderation analyzes content in real time, blocking or flagging spam, abuse, hate speech, NSFW content, and other harmful behavior before it reaches other users.
- Keeping the conversation alive, but safe: Prediction markets live on passionate debate. Stream's AI moderation looks beyond isolated words to understand intent and conversational context. It evaluates recent messages together, accounts for each platform's community norms, and can recognize harmful behavior spread across multiple messages. Teams can also review a user's moderation history to identify repeat behavior and make more informed enforcement decisions.
We like to think of it as moderation that doesn't kill engagement.
Because the best moderation is the one your users barely notice.
"Today's prediction market users expect the same messaging performance they get from the apps they use every day. If chat feels slow, clunky, or unsafe, they'll notice immediately. That's why our customers choose Stream. We give them features and performance out of the box."
- Stephen Hodgetts
Join the Industry Leaders
Prediction markets aren't slowing down.
Every major sporting event creates another internet-scale traffic spike. The same can be said for election cycles, breaking news, and global events. As billions of dollars move through prediction markets, millions of users arrive to trade, debate, and react.
Those moments demand infrastructure that can scale instantly without sacrificing user experience.
Today, ~80% of the industry's largest prediction markets trust Stream to power chat and moderation. The next generation will, too.