Kalshi’s fee revenue for non-sports contracts has been growing much faster than for sports contracts, and should top $100 million this month. However, that non-sports growth is not driven by elections or Federal Reserve decisions or culture, but by 15-minute cryptocurrency markets.
These markets — plus similar 15-minute commodity and finance markets — have exploded this year to bring in more than $20 million for Kalshi over the past seven days in fees, the equivalent of $1 billion in annualized revenue. That is around 80% of Kalshi’s non-sports fees and more than the fees from non-parlay bets on football over the same period. Most of the remainder of Kalshi’s non-sports fees come from hourly and daily crypto, commodity, or financial index markets.
Non-sports growing faster than sports
Across all product categories, Kalshi topped the $2 billion mark in fee revenue for 2026 last week and is at $2.04 billion for the year as of Tuesday.
While sports are a majority of that total, non-sports fees have not just grown, but grown more quickly than sports fees, which themselves have increased significantly since 2025. Non-sports events make up 19.2% of fee revenue in 2026, compared to just 11% in 2025.
This count, and all breakdowns referenced here, count parlays as sports unless all legs are non-sports. All fee figures include both taker and maker fees but do not account for market maker rebates, as the value of these is unknown.
The non-sports share is even higher if looking only at recent months. In September, non-sports fees made up more than 25% of fee revenue, and they're on course for a similar share in October.
Non-sports fees hit an all-time high of $4.1 million on Friday and fell just short of $100 million in the last 30 days. Even without further growth, the business is likely to exceed $700 million in non-sports fee revenue for the year, a 24-fold increase since 2025. Non-sports fee revenue over the last eight days was higher than the total collected in non-sports fees in all of 2025. Non-sports year-on-year growth has been around twice as fast as growth in sports fee revenue.
One category drives growth
Those figures may suggest that Kalshi is well on its way to becoming much more than a sports betting platform, and instead becoming an exchange where users truly trade everything.
However, in reality, the non-sports fee growth is mostly driven by one category in particular: 15-minute cryptocurrency markets.
Kalshi’s 15-minute crypto markets have grown astronomically since they launched in December 2025. In January, these markets brought in less than $10,000 per day in fee revenue, little more than a rounding error in Kalshi’s totals. However, in September they brought in upward of $2 million per day. On Friday, they brought in $2.9 million.
Kalshi has introduced further 15-minute markets on commodities and similar markets for financial indices. When these contracts are included, Kalshi’s fee revenue from 15-minute markets topped $3 million four times last week, including $3.3 million on Friday.
Excluding 15-minute crypto, finance, and commodity markets, Kalshi's non-sports fee revenue growth has been much slower. If hourly and daily versions of those markets are excluded too, the remaining non-sports markets represent only a small sliver of Kalshi's fee revenue.
Over the last seven days, up to Oct. 5, Kalshi made $25.1 million in non-sports fees, compared to $73.5 million in sports fees. Of that total, $20.4 million came from 15-minute markets, with the remaining non-sports fees totaling $4.8 million. Of that $4.8 million, $3.8 million was from other crypto, commodities, or financial index markets, mostly based on hourly or daily price windows instead.
These 15-minute markets represent a larger share of fees than their share of volume. Over the last seven days, 15-minute markets were 13% of volume, but 20% of fees. This is because Kalshi uses a fee formula that depends on the odds of a contract — fees are higher as a share of volume on contracts priced at close to 50/50 odds than they would be on the biggest favorites or longshots.
Because cryptocurrency and stock index price fluctuations in a given 15-minute window tend to be close to indistinguishable from a random walk, the prices of these markets are often close to 50% for each side.
Casino comparisons
Though the markets are clearly non-sports, they may not be what many people think of as the ideal non-sports prediction market contracts.
The fast-moving nature of the contracts, across a window where movements are hard to separate from random noise, has led to some comparisons with more traditional gambling products.
In August, gambling industry newsletter Earnings + More described 15-minute crypto markets as “echo[ing] in-play betting more than investing.” In an NPR article last week, Abdullah Mahmood, a problem gambling counselor at gambling treatment center Maryhaven in Ohio, likened the markets to slot machines.
Price discovery happening on Kalshi?
Kalshi representatives have argued that real price discovery occurs on these markets, something that wouldn’t be possible on a casino-style game.
In August, research from financial forecasting platform Synth found that “Kalshi prices are increasingly predicting subsequent moves in Binance BTC, and that predictive relationship has grown materially stronger throughout 2026.”
“Sophisticated traders are not simply reacting to Bitcoin’s current spot price,” Kalshi Head of Crypto John Wang wrote on social media site X at the time. “They run forecasting models on where it will trade 5, 10, or 30 seconds into the future using proprietary OTC order flow, order-book microstructure, cross-exchange flows, perpetual futures, liquidations, and other private signals. Unlike Binance spot, prediction markets are forward-looking and ALL of these rich inputs are baked in.”
No serious challenges to legal status
While the products may draw some comparisons to traditional gambling products, there appears to be less of an argument about their legal status than there has been for sports event contracts, which many courts have ruled can be subject to state gaming laws. Decisions against Kalshi’s sports event contracts have often been based on the definition of a swap, which opponents say sports contracts do not meet.
In the Commodity Exchange Act, a swap is defined as “dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of an event or contingency associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.”
As 15-minute crypto markets are based on a financial asset, their connection to financial consequences may be less debatable than that of sports contracts.
The legal status of these contracts has rarely been challenged, with the only exceptions being states like Minnesota that attempted to outlaw all prediction market contracts. The Minnesota bill to do so was quashed by a court. Even states that have applied their gaming laws to some non-sports contracts, such as in Nevada, have done so for entertainment and elections but not crypto, suggesting those contracts are on particularly secure footing.
Elections may change balance of non-sports revenue
The 2026 midterm elections may bring significant fee revenue for Kalshi on non-crypto, non-sports events, reducing the share of revenue from 15-minute crypto markets.
The market on the balance of power in Congress has already gained more than $30 million in volume, and the Texas Senate market more than $20 million.
Volume is likely to surge on the days leading up to the elections and especially election day and while votes are being counted. In the past, elections have been some of the biggest non-sports events on Kalshi, and volume on the presidential election market in 2024 came to $536 million, with hundreds of millions more staked on other markets related to the 2024 election season.
