Prediction market traders can now trade on who they think will be in the first halftime show in FIFA World Cup Final history.
Polymarket and Kalshi have both opened contracts on which artists will perform during the July 19 final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with FIFA projecting a global audience of two billion.
The halftime show is FIFA’s first at a World Cup Final in the tournament’s 96-year history. It will be curated by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin and band manager Phil Harvey, and produced by Global Citizen, the anti-poverty group led by Co-Founder and CEO Hugh Evans.
FIFA has said it will take over Times Square for the championship weekend, with the final and bronze medal match shown live on midtown Manhattan screens.
Right now, everyone is a coin flip
Coldplay leads the combined Kalshi and Polymarket board at 52.5%, barely above 50/50 mark.
Our tracker shows $37,600 in 30-day combined volume on the halftime show market, with Kalshi volume accounting for 97.5% and Polymarket the remaining 2.5%.
The two prediction markets list 159 possible performers between them, but CEO Hugh Evans has said Chris Martin’s picks must align with Global Citizen’s mission.
“We take values really seriously,” Anthony told Metro. ‘Not just because it’s a reputational risk, but really looking at like the heart of an artist and why we would want to work with them.’
Will it be as big as the Super Bowl halftime?
In raw US viewership, no. Globally and in prediction-market terms, the picture is more complicated.
Super Bowl LX averaged 125.6 million US viewers in February, with Bad Bunny’s halftime show pulling 128.2 million — roughly 37% of the country. The 2022 World Cup final drew 25.78 million in the US, or 7.7% of the population. That’s a 5-to-1 gap, and most of it persists even with favorable adjustments.
The 2026 final at MetLife Stadium removes the timezone disadvantage that suppressed the 2022 number, when the Qatar final aired at 10am ET. The 2015 Women’s World Cup final, played on US soil in primetime, pulled 26.7 million.
Nielsen projects 62% interest growth among US soccer fans tied to the 2026 tournament, putting the fan-base ceiling around 100 million. Even on the bullish end, that’s well short of Super Bowl reach.
Globally is where the comparison flips. The Super Bowl is a US-centric event with limited international pull. The World Cup final reaches several billion viewers worldwide, and the first-ever halftime show lands in front of an audience the Super Bowl never touches.
Kalshi’s Super Bowl LX halftime markets traded $47.3 million on the performer contract and $113.5 million on Bad Bunny’s opening song. World Cup halftime markets will trade against a smaller US viewer base but a much larger global one, with Polymarket likely capturing offshore volume Kalshi can’t reach. Total US volume probably won’t match Super Bowl 60, but the numbers won’t be small.
The current World Cup contracts cover only who will perform. A first-song or setlist market — the layer where Super Bowl halftime volume actually concentrated — has not yet been listed. The main World Cup winner contract has generated $336M in volume across both markets in the last 30 days.
The lineup will be revealed closer to the final
The partnership was first announced at the 2024 Global Citizen Festival in Central Park as part of a four-year deal with FIFA. President Gianni Infantino confirmed Coldplay’s curator role in an April 15 Semafor interview.
“It’s not one, it’s more than one,” Infantino said of the lineup. He declined to name the performers.
The show is tied to the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, a $100 million target by July to expand education and football access in more than 200 countries. FIFA directed one dollar from every 2025 Club World Cup ticket sold in the United States to the fund.
FIFA staged its first halftime show at the Club World Cup final on July 13, 2025, also at MetLife. That show, curated by Martin and produced by Global Citizen, featured J Balvin, Doja Cat, and Tems.
“From Medellín to MetLife,” J Balvin said in the FIFA announcement.
