Press

July 30, 2026. Markets.Futbol, operated by Bucketworks, Inc., today announced that its data partnership with Stats Perform now extends into Major League Soccer. Beginning with the Leagues Cup kickoff on August 4, fans can trade contracts on the run of play itself, taking positions on where the ball goes next in a market that settles continuously throughout the match rather than at the final whistle. It is a market structure that does not exist anywhere else today, tying contracts to live gameplay in real time, turning every pass, run, and shot into a live market moment, and letting fans engage with the flow of the game rather than only its outcome.

Markets.Futbol soft launched across the 2026 FIFA World Cup, proving the robustness of the data partnership during live markets through the finals, and ran live again through MLS All-Star week. Those windows validated that real-time gameplay markets can resolve accurately at scale. MLS is where that becomes a season rather than a tournament.

Traditional sports markets ask a single question before kickoff: who wins, and by how much. Markets.Futbol reframes the entire experience around the ninety minutes in between. Instead of predicting a result, users read the run of play and take positions on what happens next, resolving in seconds rather than at the final whistle. It is a game within the game, where the ball becomes the market.

Markets.Futbol is a skill-based market that rewards reading the game. Success comes from anticipating how play will develop and applying knowledge of teams, form, and live statistics. As in any prediction market, participants trade against one another rather than against an operator, so there is no house setting lines against the player. It is not a sportsbook, and it is not designed to feel like one. It is a market for game intelligence, rewarding a sharper read of the match as the edge.

A category like this only works if it is fast and if it is reliable. Real-time, zone-level prediction depends on data that arrives in a fraction of a second and can be trusted every single time a contract resolves. Stats Perform's low-latency feeds make that possible, delivering the speed and accuracy that a live, in-match market demands.

“Moving sports markets from the scoreboard to the run of play is a genuinely new problem, and it lives or dies on latency and reliability. Stats Perform worked with us to stress test something the industry hasn't built before. Launching a new market category demands that kind of rigor, and their willingness to accommodate our innovation made it possible.”

Akdeniz brings direct experience building new markets from the ground up. He previously led product at Polymarket, the world's largest prediction market, where he was present through the emergence of an entirely new category of markets and helped guide product across a period of scaling. That leadership experience in the prediction markets space now informs how Markets.Futbol is standing up a new real-time market category with the rigor it requires.

“Markets.Futbol has created a prediction market that rewards traders for reading the game in real time, with event contracts resolving in seconds. We're proud that Opta provides the data foundation behind it. Our ultra-low-latency delivery supports real-time trading, while the breadth, accuracy and reliability of the data provide a trusted basis for contract creation, resolution and settlement. That trust has been built over decades and is now helping Markets.Futbol establish an entirely new category of football markets.”

The MLS partnership gives Markets.Futbol a continuous domestic calendar rather than a single tournament window. Leagues Cup runs through early September, and MLS regular season play continues to Decision Day on November 7 and into the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs. Live markets run throughout.

Markets.Futbol views real-time, in-match markets as complementary to existing platforms rather than competitive with them, as early access users have described running Markets.Futbol side by side with other platforms during live matches. The company believes that introducing new real-time markets does more than create a new way to watch. It makes sports markets more efficient by pricing information as it happens, and it produces a rich new real-time data layer for sports analytics that has never existed before. Markets.Futbol is open to partnerships that bring live gameplay markets to users on established trading platforms.

Markets.Futbol is currently invite-only, with access being extended to users on the waitlist ahead of a broader rollout. Fans can join the waitlist now to request access for the Leagues Cup run and the MLS season.

Join the waitlist: markets.futbol

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