Well Of Wishes

What is Well Of Wishes?

Joey Feazel, head of football at Caesars Sportsbook, told Casino.org that favorites, Overs, and anytime touchdown scorers combined to create a bettor-friendly trifecta. Bettors only faced major resistance when the Los Angeles Chargers were upset by the Arizona Cardinals.

However, LSR noted that traditional game outcomes are no longer reliable indicators of bookmaker profitability, largely due to the rapid growth of same-game parlays and player props.

In the Las Vegas-based Circa Survivor contest, which drew over 25,000 entries entering Week 1, more than 8,000 entries were eliminated in the opening slate—most knocked out when the 8.5-point favorite Chargers fell to the Cardinals. That upset served as a proxy for the wider market, ruining countess parlay tickets across major sportsbooks.

What is Well Of Wishes?

The pure-play prediction market-operators, Polymarket and Kalshi, emerged from Week 1 as the clear winners. On one hand, Kalshi’s market share lead narrowed over its competitors, falling to 82% for the week ended 13 September, down from 86% a week earlier.

Still, Kalshi had a nine-fold lead over Polymarket, its next closest rival. Polymarket, meanwhile, led the group with 762,000 app downloads, edging Kalshi, DraftKings and FanDuel in the category. The downloads represented a 13,509% weekly increase and 25% of total category downloads, Polymarket wrote in a statement.

Across the market, operators delivered high double-digit gains compared with Labor Day weekend, which featured a full slate of college football games but no NFL contests. Two operators, DraftKings and Underdog each saw triple-digit growth, delivering weekly increases of 125% and 119%, respectively. Three others, Polymarket, Crypto.com and Novig, saw gains of at least 30%, led by Polymarket with a weekly increase of 46%.

What is Well Of Wishes?

Potentially boding well for the Macquarie forecast are at least two factors. First, there are signs of turnover increases across a variety of yes/no exchanges. Second, volume surged to start September with those spikes arriving even before the NFL season kicked off.

As Macquarie analyst Chad Beynon points out, prediction markets generated $4.3 billion in taker volume during the first week of September without any help from the NFL, building on momentum from the 2026 World Cup. However, the NFL’s impact was immediate, with taker volume hitting a daily record during Week 1 of the campaign.

With all that in mind, it’s not surprising that Macquarie expects sports event contracts will drive approximately 80% of taker volume this year, but Beynon sees other categories growing over the long term.