Polymarket Sports and Esports: Esports Took 21.4% of the Money on the Thinnest Books

Esports carried the most money of any sport on Polymarket in Vultax's record, on the thinnest books of any sport measured. Of the $727.0 million of Polymarket trading Vultax recorded in 251 hours between 21 August and 12 September 2026, esports took 21.4%, ahead of soccer at 16.2%, tennis at 14.1% and U.S. sports at 8.9%. It came in a rush: League of Legends markets averaged about $1.1 million an hour between 08:00 and 11:00 UTC, the evening in Seoul and Shanghai, and $18,000 at 03:00.

The books underneath are nothing alike. In readings up to six hours before kickoff on 12 and 13 September, the median NFL game had $523,000 of orders within 2 cents of its price on Polymarket and $1.74 million on Kalshi; the median League of Legends match had $413. Yet the largest wallet in a typical League of Legends market held a quarter of the money, against 58% in an NFL market. Esports prices are set by a broad crowd trading against a few thin resting orders, and on a playoff Sunday, 6 September 2026, that crowd out-traded the Fed.

Each line is the average money traded per observed hour. Esports rises before dawn in Europe and peaks mid-morning UTC; soccer takes over through the European afternoon and evening; U.S. sports runs from late afternoon UTC to the small hours; tennis sits underneath all of them.

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League of Legends alone traded $92.0 million, more than any other single title or league measured. The table ranks the individual sports and titles by money traded. The busiest weekday is indicative only: three weeks give each weekday three to six observed days.

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A daily "most traded" list taken in the European morning is an esports list; the same list at midnight UTC is baseball and tennis. The crypto up-or-down markets that make most of Polymarket's trades run around the clock, so their share of the venue rises whenever sport goes quiet.

• Tennis barely sleeps - ATP and WTA tennis together traded $97.9 million, with the U.S. Open inside the window, and never fell below $120,000 an hour. Its busiest hour carried seven times its quietest, the flattest pattern of any sport, and its share of all observed money ran from 7% at 08:00 UTC to 24% at 22:00 UTC.
• Esports comes in a morning rush - League of Legends' three busiest hours, 08:00 to 10:00 UTC, are when the Korean and Chinese leagues usually play; Counter-Strike 2 peaked at 16:00 UTC and Dota 2 at 12:00 UTC. Esports as a whole swung 25-fold.
• U.S. sports keeps U.S. hours - baseball traded $48.6 million, most of it between 20:00 and 01:00 UTC, and U.S. sports swung 75-fold. The window caught only the start of the college football and NFL seasons.

Every traditional sport in the sample had a one-cent spread in a typical reading and in the worst quarter of readings, and books measured in tens of thousands of dollars or more. No esports title had a typical book of more than a few hundred dollars, and the worst quarter of esports readings showed spreads of 12 to 66 cents. The NFL was deep on both venues: in readings up to six hours before kickoff, the median game held $1.74 million within 2 cents on Kalshi and $523,000 on Polymarket.

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The medians hide a few deep matches. A quarter of League of Legends readings had more than $8,000 within 2 cents and a tenth more than $63,000; widen the window to 10 cents either side and the median League of Legends book held $6,365, Counter-Strike 2 $752 and Dota 2 $841. Markets on individual maps or games were thinner still, with median spreads of 41 to 97 cents before the match, and Polymarket's market data marks its NFL and esports books to clear when play starts.

• What that means for a price - in a typical Counter-Strike 2 match, an order of a few hundred dollars would use up everything within 2 cents and keep going, so the displayed price is closer to the last trade on a thin book than to a consensus of many orders.
• What that means for a record - a wallet's profit in esports can include fills a larger trader could never repeat, which matters when following another trader.

Participation runs the other way from depth. Dota 2 and League of Legends markets had the most traders per market, and the three largest esports titles the least concentrated money of any family measured. Football on Polymarket had the fewest traders and the most concentrated money, although the window caught only the opening weeks of both the college and the NFL seasons.

Part of the esports crowd never sleeps. In the three days to 6 September 2026, 125 of the 1,796 wallets trading six LPL and LCK playoff markets, 7.0%, belonged to the 2,080 round-the-clock wallets from the cadence study, and they made 24.6% of the trades. On the Fed contracts the same cohort was 2.6% of wallets and 19.8% of trades.

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The pattern fits a simple picture: professional liquidity on both sides of NFL, MLB and Premier League markets, where outside prices from sportsbooks and exchanges give market makers a reference, and in esports a crowd of smaller traders taking prices from whoever happens to be resting an order. Vultax measured depth and concentration, not who the counterparties are, so that picture is an interpretation. It also explains a result from the arbitrage study: Kalshi and Polymarket prices on NFL games did not cross once before kickoff in 7,518 checks, because books that deep do not leave gaps.

A playoff weekend can put esports ahead of anything on the macro calendar. In the 24 hours to 07:00 UTC on Sunday 6 September 2026, the five markets with the most notional in Vultax's observed Polymarket fills were all League of Legends and Counter-Strike playoff markets, 16,536 fills worth $5.28 million. The first non-game market was a US Open tennis match in sixth, and the Fed did not make the top eight.

Polymarket's own figures, read at the same time, agreed. Among its hundred busiest active markets, esports carried 21.4% of the last day's volume, $2.99 million, against 20.5%, $2.87 million, for the five September Fed contracts combined, then a 49.5 / 49.5 coin flip with $99 million behind it. That 21.4% is one day's share of the top hundred markets, a different measure from esports' 21.4% of all observed money between 21 August and 12 September.

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The strip at the top of this page is rewritten every ten minutes from Polymarket's top markets by 24-hour volume, Vultax's fills on the esports markets it tracks, Riot's LoL Esports schedule and live-match API, OpenDota's professional matches, Steam's player counts and the CLOB's resolution flags. The Vi IQ beneath it scores the six domains the Vultax terminal scores for a pair, computed for this page's subject from published inputs; a domain that cannot be computed shows as unavailable.

The first two figures are the live version of the 6 September snapshot: esports' and the Fed's share of the top hundred markets' volume in the last day. The third is esports dollars in that window, the fourth how many esports markets resolve today. The body's figures are dated; the strip is the same measure now, and the Vultax market directory lists every open Polymarket market with its 24-hour volume and liquidity.

The 2026 League of Legends World Championship runs from 15 October to 14 November, with the final at Barclays Center in New York on 14 November, and the LPL, LCK and LEC playoffs that decide its seeds are when best-of-five game markets stack up in a single afternoon. Esports is the part of the sports calendar that never stops: a league somewhere is in playoffs every month of the year.

Sports is the category that built these venues. Pew counted sports at about 80% of Kalshi's volume and 39% of Polymarket's since mid-2024, and June 2026's World Cup pushed the two venues to about $44.8 billion combined before August brought the first monthly decline in a year. Two caveats travel with the volume: Columbia researchers flagged about 45% of Polymarket's historical sports volume as wash trading, the highest share of any category, and the CFTC has proposed rules that would bar event contracts on officiating outcomes and player injuries on U.S.-regulated venues.

Trading figures come from Vultax's hourly record of Polymarket trades, built from Polymarket's public data API: 251 of the 533 hours between 21 August and 12 September 2026, with each UTC hour of the day observed 6 to 15 times, so a single large event in one observed hour can lift its average. Markets were grouped by the sport prefix in their Polymarket address, so props and totals count alongside winners and markets without a recognised prefix are left out. Concentration figures cover markets with at least $1,000 traded, and wallets were hashed.

Order books were read to 20 levels every five minutes from 18:51 UTC on 12 September to 23:06 UTC on 13 September. Depth within 2 cents is the sum of price times size near the midpoint; readings with a midpoint below 15 or above 85 cents were left out; Kalshi start times are estimated as expected settlement minus a typical game length, which can shift a reading between the pre-game and in-play groups. Twenty-eight hours over one weekend is a short window, and esports calendars vary sharply by week.

The 6 September snapshot uses Polymarket's own 24-hour volume for its hundred busiest active markets at read time, with categories assigned from each market's question; the interactive edition lists every market. Vultax's fills that day can undercount markets whose fills arrived late. A trading pattern is not proof of automation, and no wallet is named. Nothing here is a recommendation to trade. Challenge a figure at [email protected]; material changes are logged in the changelog.