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Polymarket US Opens Parlays to All Traders, Chasing Kalshi

Quick Glance at the Facts

• Polymarket US turned on its parlay-style “Build a Combo” feature for regular customers.
• The multi-leg contracts trade as federally regulated event contracts under the CFTC, not as state-licensed sportsbook bets.
• Rival Kalshi already runs a large combo business, with more than $9 billion traded on parlays in the first 18 days of August, Legal Sports Report reported.

Polymarket US just let everyday traders combine several sports outcomes into one parlay-style position through a new “Build a Combo” button. That matters because it pushes a federally regulated prediction market deeper into parlay territory that traditional sportsbooks and Kalshi have leaned on for growth.

What Polymarket Actually Turned On

Polymarket US opened its parlay-style trading to ordinary customers, Casino Life Magazine reported on August 24, 2026. The feature lets a trader bundle multiple sporting results into a single position that only pays out if every leg lands. Polymarket calls these products Combinatorial Athletic Outcome Contracts, or CAOCs.

The company self-certified the CAOCs with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on May 20 and started a private beta on August 5, according to Legal Sports Report. Casino Life Magazine put that beta at roughly $7.4 million across 16,173 trades. The contracts allow between two and 10 legs, each bundled into a single $1 position, and sports already account for more than 99% of Polymarket US’s $15.5 billion in 2026 trading volume.

This is the part players should keep straight. Polymarket US and Kalshi are CFTC-regulated prediction markets, which are not the same as licensed online sportsbooks or offshore sportsbooks. Even though the platforms look suspiciously like sportsbooks (moreso now with the parlay clone), they are still available widely across the US and are unregulated by state government gaming laws.

Why Polymarket Is Chasing Kalshi Now

Polymarket is late to a market Kalshi already leads. Parlays overtook straight sports contracts as Kalshi’s top weekly category starting the week of August 2, and more than $9 billion traded on Kalshi parlays through the first 18 days of August, about 42% of its volume, Legal Sports Report noted.

The timing points at football. With the NFL season opening in just 2 weeks, both operators want combo products live to capture the busiest stretch of the sports calendar.

How This Impacts Players

If you already trade sports contracts on Polymarket US, you now have a parlay-style tool that resembles a sportsbook parlay but settles as a federal event contract, so all legs must hit for any payout. Because these are CFTC-regulated products rather than state-licensed sportsbooks, your access depends on the ongoing federal-versus-state fight rather than your state’s sports betting license, and pricing will only be as good as the liquidity behind each combo.

GamblingNerd Take

Polymarket copied the one product driving Kalshi’s numbers, and doing it as a CFTC contract lets it reach traders in states where sportsbooks cannot operate. The catch is liquidity: a 10-leg combo is worthless if nobody takes the other side at a fair price. Before you build one, check the quoted payout against a real sportsbook parlay so you know whether the “combo” is actually worth trading.

As Polymarket and other prediction markets push further into sports territory, the line between “trades” and “bets” becomes thinner. I think we’ll see a large, multi-state backlash against the CFTC in the near future.