July 9, 2026

Kalshi Captured 38% of the Betting Apps' World Cup Growth

The sportsbooks peaked on day four and faded; Kalshi kept climbing and took the funnel. As quarterfinals begin, the US free chart's top two still belong to Love Island and Netflix, and Moon Active bought its way to a #4 game.

The prediction market ate the sportsbooks' World Cup

The sportsbooks' World Cup DAUs peaked on June 15. Kalshi's never stopped climbing.

• Apptopia's June analysis (published July 6): DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars all set their June daily-active highs on June 15, four days into the tournament, then fell 32% to 41% by month-end. Kalshi went the other way. Its June 30 daily actives sat 36% above its June 15 level; Polymarket's were 12% higher.
• When the six-app group's combined daily-active pool nearly quadrupled year-over-year in June, Kalshi captured 38% of that growth and Polymarket another 13%, up from roughly 6% together a year earlier. On downloads the gap is starker: Kalshi and Polymarket took 78.5% of the group's June installs. DraftKings, the largest sportsbook by reach, still logged more than 1.1 million downloads, so raw demand held. The question the data raises is directional, where the next bettor is choosing to start.
• The cross-app flow runs one way. The share of DraftKings users who also opened Kalshi rose 45% from June 1 to June 22; FanDuel-to-Kalshi rose 35%. The reverse flows fell. Kalshi is the only app in the group broadening its audience: its fastest-growing June cohorts were women (up 106%) and users aged 46 and up (up 60%), demographics the sportsbooks spent a decade not acquiring. DraftKings answered with its own exchange, DKeX, on June 26.
• Tom Grant, Apptopia's VP of Research: "DraftKings can own the most engaged bettor in the country and still be losing the argument for the next one, because the demographic Kalshi is adding doesn't look like the base the sportsbooks spent a decade acquiring." DraftKings still runs the most intense usage, about 19 sessions per daily active versus high-single digits for Kalshi. The serious core stays; the new funnel does not.

This is the mechanism behind Kalshi's chart staying power. It sits at #5 on the US top-free chart this morning and is climbing back as the knockout stage resumes, the one World Cup app whose audience kept building after the rest peaked.

Quarterfinals begin today, and the top of the chart didn't flip back

US top-free chart, Appfigures hourly rollup, this morning

• Appfigures' top-overall rollup (updated within the hour): Love Island USA #1, Netflix Game Controller #2, Trump Accounts #3, Peacock #4, Kalshi #5, ChatGPT #6, FOX One #7. Apple's own live chart flips it, putting Netflix Game Controller at #1 and ChatGPT at #2. Either way, the World Cup apps that owned the top five all June are back inside it (Peacock, Kalshi) but have not retaken the top, even with quarterfinal 1 kicking off today at 4 p.m. ET at Gillette Stadium (FOX One in English, Peacock and Telemundo in Spanish).
• As covered yesterday, the World Cup apps slipped out of the top five during the quiet patch before the knockouts (Peacock #5, Kalshi #6, FOX One #7 on July 8). The return has been partial: Peacock and Kalshi each climbed one spot into the top five, FOX One held at #7. The month-long reflex, where World Cup apps seized #1 the moment matches were on, has not re-engaged yet.
• Netflix Game Controller reaching #1 on Apple's own chart is the odd one. The accessory app hit #1 overall on four weekends in April, then dropped midweek every time. Holding the top of the chart through a Thursday morning is new territory for it. The free controller app for Netflix's living-room multiplayer games keeps outcharting the streaming apps it depends on, and it is holding near its April weekend-peak level through the midweek, which it never did before.

Moon Active bought a #4 game in four days

Hole Stars climbed 222 spots in four days, fueled by paid user acquisition

• Hole Stars: Puzzle Game, from Coin Master publisher Moon Active, climbed 222 spots in the Games category, from #226 on June 29 to a peak of #4 by July 3, per MWM (published July 5). Daily downloads jumped from 13,784 on June 29 to over 53,000 on July 1 and over 77,000 on July 2, a more than fivefold increase. The app gathered 159,000-plus downloads over the week.
• MWM attributes the spike to a large-scale paid user-acquisition campaign, not a feature update. The last app update, June 21, used generic and repeated launch notes. This is Moon Active applying its data-driven performance-marketing playbook, the one that scaled Coin Master, to a new puzzle genre to diversify its portfolio.
• The tell that it is a burst and not organic: daily revenue did not grow at the same rate as downloads. The strategy reads as market penetration over immediate profit, buying rank now to earn retention later. The app is holding in the top free games snapshot (July 7) but the paid fuel is finite.

Meta's vibe-coded games app walked into the Apple rule that killed its rivals

Pocket generates playable gizmos from text prompts, the same mechanic Apple blocked elsewhere

• TechTimes (July 8): Meta Pocket, soft-launched in Brazil on June 29, generates playable "gizmos" from plain-English prompts and runs them inside the app. That is the same in-app web-view mechanic that got Apple to block updates for the vibe-coding apps Replit and Vibecode in March and April, and to remove a third app, Anything, from the store entirely. The cited rule was App Store Guideline 2.5.2, which prohibits apps from executing code that changes their functionality after review.
• Meta has not disclosed how Pocket's sandboxing differs from what the blocked apps did, or whether it has an agreement with Apple. The silence lands in a hostile legal week: four US states disclosed a collective $1.4 trillion damages claim against Meta over social-media addiction harms to minors on July 7, the same day the lawsuit's scope broke.
• Pocket is still Brazil-only and not charting in the US. The open question is whether it survives a broader rollout or hits the same wall the smaller vibe-coding apps did. Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, who first spotted Pocket on July 2, expects Meta to push it across Instagram and Facebook once a wider rollout begins, which would matter more for distribution than any App Store featuring.

Tracking

• Apple v. Epic. Apple filed its stay motion (July 6); Epic's response is due tomorrow, July 10, Apple's reply July 13. If the stay is denied, Apple must propose its external-link commission within 24 hours. No ruling yet, and Apple is still forgoing the 27% external-link commission while it waits.
• AI apps, US top-free overall. ChatGPT #6, Claude #11, Google Gemini #13, Meta AI #24. A quiet week for the category, with no debut crashing the chart. Grok sat at #30 on the top-apps (non-games) chart.
• Trump Accounts: Official App. Held #3, continuing the gradual post-July-4 decay (it was #2 on July 7). The drop is a one-spot drift, not a cliff.
• Goddess of Victory: Nikke. The "Marciana Marine Study" summer banner opens today, July 9, extending the "WAVE TO YOU" update that put the game at #1 on Korea's App Store grossing chart. The Cinderella crystal-wave banner runs through July 23.
• Pokemon Champions. Still out of the US top-25 free games; the launch download surge is spent. Worth watching whether the ten-million-download install base converts to grossing.

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