03 Jul eSport Kalshi’s June esports data shows a $231.8M market dominated by Counter-Strike July 3, 2026 Posted by GataGames Leave a comment Kalshi’s esports markets traded $231.8 million across 4.05 million individual trades in June 2026, spread across 28 distinct series covering seven titles. With the danger of sounding like I’m flogging a dead horse, the $231.8 million traded does not equal total money risked, such is the nature of prediction markets. The more interesting one is this: 57% of it, $132.1 million, was a small cluster of Counter-Strike 2 markets, and a good chunk of that ran through one week in the middle of the month, when IEM Cologne was live. I previously broke down IEM Cologne’s Kalshi data here. Kalshi Esports · June 2026 The month in four numbers Total Contracts 231.80M 231,796,650 Total Trades 4.05M 4,047,758 fills Active Series 28 distinct esports markets Days Tracked 30 2026-06-01 → 2026-06-30 CS2 absolutely dominates June There’s a clear market leader in what people are trading in June, and the answer’s clearly Counter-Strike. 59% of every esports contract traded on Kalshi in June 2026 was on Counter-Strike 2. This was almost entirely single-match betting (made up of game winner, map winner and total-maps markets), plus a small slice on the tournament-outright market. No other title cracked 12% of the month’s volume, and the sheer dominance was particularly pronounced at IEM Cologne in the third week. Top Series — Full Month 2026-06-01 → 2026-06-30 · ranked by contracts traded · CS2’s game/map/total-maps/qualifier markets combined into one “Single-Match Betting” line; CS2 Tournament Winner (the outright futures market) stays separate # Series Contracts Trades % Mo. 01 CS2 Single-Match Betting CS2 132.13M 2.12M 57.0% 02 League of Legends Game League of Legends 26.80M 353.1K 11.6% 03 Valorant game winner Valorant 20.14M 429.2K 8.7% 04 League of Legends Map Winner League of Legends 12.65M 201.3K 5.5% 06 Call of Duty Games Call of Duty 7.28M 180.1K 3.1% 07 Valorant Map Winner Valorant 5.91M 121.5K 2.5% 09 CS2 Tournament Winner CS2 3.51M 30.8K 1.5% 11 COD Map Winner Call of Duty 2.12M 54.0K 0.9% 12 League of Legends Total Maps League of Legends 1.74M 42.8K 0.8% League of Legends Game Winner was a distant second at 11.6% of the month ($26.8 million), with Valorant’s game-winner market close behind at 8.7% ($20.1 million). Between them, CS2’s single-match betting, LoL’s game market and Valorant’s game market accounted for 77% of everything traded on Kalshi’s esports board in June. It goes to show that when there’s a major Counter-Strike event on, it swallows the competition. Whether or not that changes in July with LoL’s MSI taking place remains to be seen. Share of Monthly Contract Volume, by Game What “57%” is actually made of It’s worth breaking such a substantial number down. CS2, broadly speaking, isn’t just one market on Kalshi. It can be split into five. These are whether a team wins the match; whether it wins a given map; whether the match goes over or under a total-maps line; whether a team qualifies for the next stage of a tournament; and, separately, who wins the whole event outright. Nearly four-fifths of CS2’s entire monthly volume, $103.8 million, sat in the single “who wins the match” market alone. Map winner markets added another 20% ($26.9 million). Inside CS2’s 135.65M Contracts how CS2’s own volume splits across its five markets Single-Match Betting vs. Tournament Outright Single-Match Betting Tournament Winner (outright) Inside Single-Match Betting The IEM Cologne effect, at a more granular level The tournament comfortably produced pretty much all of the top ten biggest markets, and stealing a table I made for the IEM Cologne analysis, the match-level wagering generally followed the tournament progression. Falcons were involved in the top three traded markets. This can simply be explained by the magnitude of the eventual winners’ contests with the two teams tipped to win it all pre-tournament in Team Spirit and Team Vitality. Match volume Top 15 Matches — All Stages Ranked by combined market volume (both sides) Jun 2–21, 2026 1Falcons vs FURIAGrand Final$3.64M 2Spirit vs FalconsPlayoff SF$3.45M 3Vitality vs FalconsPlayoff QF$3.30M 4G2 vs Natus VincereStage 3$2.62M 5Spirit vs G2 EsportsPlayoff QF$2.44M 69z vs SpiritStage 3$2.56M 7Falcons vs Natus VincereStage 3$2.07M 89z vs FURIAPlayoff QF$1.94M 9G2 vs FalconsStage 3$1.71M 10BIG vs NRGStage 1$1.44M 11Spirit vs Aurora GamingStage 3$1.31M 12B8 Esports vs BIGStage 2$1.26M 13BetBoom vs FalconsStage 3$1.16M 14GamerLegion vs B8 EsportsStage 2$1.05M 159z vs VitalityStage 3$1.02M League of Legends could be set for a big MSI One match would break into the top ten, sitting just above 9z vs FURIA outside of Counter-Strike and that match was T1 vs Gen.G which saw $1.97 million traded. There’s not been an awful lot of League of Legends action of late with MSI play-ins just finishing up (and my god, did T1 look strong). The Korean World Champions didn’t drop a single map as they swept their way to the main stage at MSI. As we move into July, it’ll be interesting to see if having a huge global League of Legends event takes some of Counter-Strike’s thunder. Given that the number of fixtures is significantly lower, MSI may not reach Cologne’s total seismic volume,but I’d expect there to be some heavy-hitters on match volume alone. Editor’s methodology note: Figures cover Kalshi esports markets from 2026-06-01 → 2026-06-30. “Contracts” refers to total contract volume traded on a market; “trades” refers to the number of individual fills. Weekly blocks run Sunday–Saturday from June 1; Week 5 is a two-day tail (June 29–30) and should not be compared directly to full seven-day weeks. CS2’s game winner, map winner, total-maps and qualifier markets are combined into one “Single-Match Betting” line throughout, since they’re all bets on the same underlying matches; the separate CS2 Tournament Winner market (an outright futures pick) is kept on its own line. Individual-match figures combine both sides of a match (e.g. “will A win” and “will B win”) into one market-size total; where only one side’s volume was available, the figure is flagged and reflects that side alone. Figures are sourced from Kalshi’s public market data. Source link Facebook Twitter Email Pinterest