UCL Final Saturday: Polymarket Has PSG at 57%

In this Friday edition of The Prediction Report, we highlight at the UEFA Champions League Final, Polymarket coming with a strange name for parlays, an IPO from OpenAI in September, and Women’s FA Cup Final, CONCACAF Champions Cup Final, and NASCAR Cracker Barrel 400 previews.

The biggest soccer tournament every year is all down to one big match with defending holders Paris Saint-Germain and French Ligue 1 champions facing EPL champions Arsenal in the 2026 UEFA Champions League Final from Puskás Aréna in Budapest, Hungary this Saturday.

PSG got here by outscoring everyone they faced, knocking off AS Monaco, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Bayern Munich (23 GF-11 GA) while Arsenal relied more on a defensive approach in ousting Bayer Leverkusen, Sporting CP, and Atlético Madrid (7 GF-2 GA). And no, no typo or bad addition. Why?

Because PSG had to play in one more round (KO Phase Playoffs)—where it was almost eliminated by A Monaco—and because the scores of Gunners look like some boring-ass codewriter doing his job while listening to Muzak and drinking decaffeinated coffee: (1-1, 2-0, 1-0, 0-0, 1-1, 1-0).

Eight goals in 6 matches? So much fun. But that brings us to Saturday and a match where Ousmane Dembélé and Les Parisiens will look to make it back-to-back UCL titles in this 71st edition of the tourney with Arsenal looking to cap off possibly its most successful campaign ever.

The Gunners have never won the Champions League, and after holding off Manchester City to capture the EPL crown, look to bring even more glory back to North London. This is a clash of one side wanting to push the pace and the other wanting to slow things down and control possession.

The 2025-26 UEFA Champions League winners will reap all of the benefits of a win in Budapest including automatic qualification into next year’s League Phase (something both would have anyway) as well as qualification for the 2026 FIFA Intercontinental Cup final. Not enough?

Whoever wins on Saturday will also qualify for the Group Stage of the 2029 FIFA World Cup and will also play the winners of the 2025-26 Europa League (Aston Villa) in the 2026 UEFA Super Cup. The champions will also receive a cold bottle of Heineken, pogácsa and a Túró Rudi chocolate bar.

Before we get to Saturday's picks, one opportunity tied directly to the biggest market event of the year deserves your attention.

Now, on to how the prediction markets are pricing Saturday's match in Budapest.

EPL winners Arsenal FC will face Ligue 1 winners Paris Saint-Germain at Puskás Aréna (Grass) in Budapest, Hungary on Saturday in the 2026 UEFA Champions League Final and there are many ways to skin the cat if you are trying to make a little money on this season-ending match.

The tournament saw a record five English Premier League clubs competing with Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur, who ironically found themselves fighting relegation in EPL Matchweek 38 in a battle with West Ham United for 17th place.

One day, you are playing defending champs Paris Saint-Germain in the world-is-watching UCL and the next day you’re facing little Derby County at Pride Park in Derby, England in the English Championship League (EFL) . Life comes at you really fast these strange days.

At Polymarket in the UEFA Champions League Winner market, Paris Saint-German was trading at 57% on May 28 with underdogs Arsenal at 43%, while in the (3-way) Paris Saint-Germain FC vs Arsenal FC match market, PSG was at 42%, Arsenal at 31% with a Draw (tie after 90 mins) at 30%.

➤Trading Thoughts: The first thing about handicapping this massive game is determining if you think Arsenal can slow down the PSG attack, and possibly win a low-scoring match in Budapest. Gunners GK David Raya has been superb in the UCL and EPL, but will be tested. For me, PSG runs.

That means the champs should control the pace no matter how hard Arsenal tries to slow down the game, and after you are trailing, say 0-1 or 0-2, there is no way you will be slowing anything down because you are fucking trailing in the last and biggest match of the season. Fear makes fast.

And expect PSG, with the electric Dembélé—who has promised to be fit for this—the can’t miss Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Vitinha, and Désiré Doué, to create three-to four-times as many real scoring chances as Arsenal. PSG GK Matvei Safonov is happy he doesn’t have to face his own team.

Backing PSG in both markets is logical, as you can’t score if you can’t rely on being able to turn on your attack immediately like Bayern, Madrid, Barça, and PSG. Arsenal is an alligator waiting for a duck. PSG are piranhas chasing real prey. ➤Trading Picks: PSG to Win UCL 58¢, PSG (Match) 42¢

Click here to trade on the UEFA Champions League Winner at Polymarket

With the UCL Final set and the SpaceX IPO just two weeks away, one trade is drawing serious attention from investors looking to get ahead of the biggest buying spree in history.

Back to Budapest — there are some other UCL markets worth a look beyond just the winner.

Besides the primary who will lift the UCL trophy and what will be the result after 90 minutes plus injury time markets, there are a number of other interesting markets involving the 2026 UEFA Champions League Final. Let’s take a quick look at two of them and provide trading picks.

In the UEFA Champions League Most Assists market, Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior (8 assists) was trading at 82% (Polymarket) with PSG’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (6 assists, 7.2%) and Achraf Hakimi (6 assists, 5.3%) and Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise (8 assists, 4%) following.

That means with two assists, either one of Las Parisiens can tie Vini Jr. and Olise. It also means if one of those cats has two assists on Saturday, he will have 8 and we will see a three-way tie. So Hakimi at 9 cents looks like a decent ‘Yes’ contract worth having $10 (111 shares) on. Why?

Should PSG’s Hakimi steal this somewhat ignored market ($69,149 volume on May 21), 111 contracts paying $1 each would pay $111. But wait. This is where being a human and a journalist is being much better than a machine and code and AI. So here are this market’s specific rules:

“In the event of a tie, this market will resolve according to the official leader as determined by UEFA Champions League rules. If multiple leaders are announced then this market will resolve to the player whose listed last name comes first alphabetically.“ You read it right, Bubba. This is dumb yet real.

So if Hakimi (5.3%) has 2 assists, he will tie Vini Júnior (82%) and Olise at 8. And because the letter ‘H’ come before the letter “J” (Vinícius José Paixão de Oliveira Júnior) and ‘O’, Hakimi would beat him out (and teammate Kvaratskhelia if he has 2 assists), as ‘H’ is first of all four of these letters.

Arsenal FC [4-2-3-1]: Raya; Calafiori, Gabriel, Saliba, Mosquera; Lewis-Skelly, Rice; Eze, Odegaard, Saka; Gyökeres

Paris Saint-Germain [4-3-3]: Safonov; Mendes, Marquinhos, Pacho, Hakimi; Vitinha, Neves, Zaïre-Emery; Kvaratskhelia Doué, Dembélé

Key Injuries: Timber, Arsenal

Best Subs: Bradley Barcola, Gonçalo Ramos, PSG; Karl Havertz, Leandro Trossard, Arsenal 

A lion is a lion. A tiger is a tiger. When a lion and tiger mate, it’s a liger. A parlay is a parlay. And at Kalshi, a parlay is called a Combo. You can’t add cheese. Now at Polymarket—seeking CFTC approval for these trades—a parlay will be a “Combinatoric Athletic Outcome Contract” (CAOC).

Back in a second. I need to hire a lawyer. Perhaps Dr Gonzo is between jobs. Or maybe I need a damn smoke. But I don’t smoke? My spellcheck just overheated and asked why I am here inventing new words like “combinatoric” and wanting three forms of ID and a Disney World Bubble Wand. 

Lord help us. Four words. Twelve syllables. Thirty-four letters. Do we have that kind of Time in The Digital Age with so much needless clutter? A CAOC will be called a parlay in my mind although when writing about these new things that are really old, I’ll call it a CAOC and pronounce it ‘cock.’

Polymarket’s filing will no doubt be approved by Michael Selig and the CFTC, and the prediction market giant, can offer the same type of bet Kalshi offers under a completely different name likely given to them by a mothertrucker who has never even made a parlay bet in his (or her) whole life.

Watching some in the sports betting industry get so mad over prediction markets is funny and the names Kalshi and Polymarket give to these bet types where nothing can lose or the rollercoaster goes off the track at the top of the hill and you talk about that team that cost you until early 2028.

Polymarket announced that it had signed a multi-year partnership making the exchange the official prediction market of the Italian Serie A soccer league, one of the five top professional leagues in Europe (English Premier League, German Bundesliga, French Ligue 1, Spanish LALIGA).

The deal makes Polymarket the official and exclusive prediction market partner of Serie A in the US. Some well-known clubs who play in the Italian Serie A include Inter Milan, AC Milan, Juventus, Napoli, and AS Roma. Lautaro Martínez and Inter have already won the Serie A title this season.

Polymarket will get brand integrations across Serie A’s US media and digital channels. The collaboration is the latest in Polymarket’s expansion into professional sports with partnerships already galvanized with LA LIGA North America, the UFC, MLB, the NHL, and most recently, MLS.

Michele Ciccarese, Italian Serie A Marketing and Commercial Director said, “The US represents a key growth market for Serie A. Our exclusive alliance with Polymarket, as Regional Partner in the USA, lets us engage a new generation of fans through a platform that embodies emerging trends.”

“It delivers an interactive, real-time product rooted in insights and participation perfectly aligned with their expectations.” Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan added, “The next phase of sports engagement won’t be defined by more content, but by more participation. 

“Prediction markets give fans a way to actively interpret the game in real time, and partnering with Serie A brings that model to one of the world’s most followed leagues at a moment when American interest in the sport is at an all-time high.”

News has been surfacing of a potential IPO from OpenAI this September, with CEO Sam Altman reportedly working with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs with the Wall Street Journal reporting the ChatGPT maker is ready to go public. SpaceX is already set to launch an IPO on June 12, 2026.

The news came on the heels of SpaceX guru Elon Musk losing a lawsuit concerning OpenAI—a company he co-founded with Altman—so both may be measuring their egos this Summer with the size of both of these IPOs possibly in a historical battle for the biggest ever. Sounds like a porn site.

At Polymarket, you can trade on OpenAI IPO by...? time frames for the listing, with December 31, 2026 the easy favorite (70%), followed by September 30, 2026 (24%), August 31, 2026 (4%), July 31, 2026 (2%), and June 30, 2026 (1%).

➤Trading Thoughts: There only seems to be one decent way to approach this polymarket as it sits now. The December 31 ‘Yes’ seems gold, but tying up funds 7 months may not appeal to some. Determining if the OpenAI IPO is out before September 30 will be the only decent approach now. ➤Trading Pick: Before September 30, 2026, No 77¢

Click here to trade on OpenAI IPO by...? at Polymarket

The Los Angeles Mayor race is scheduled for November 3, 2026 along with the General Election with the Non-Partisan Primary set for June 2. Here is a list of the current 17 candidates for the 2026 Mayoral election in Los Angeles, all non-partisan:

On that list is Spencer Pratt, a former cast member on the MTV Reality TV show called The Hills (2006-2020). And a trader on Kalshi has placed a bid for 1,158,296.84 shares at 30¢ to win.

So can Pratt win? Of course he can. He seems to have the blessing of our self-appointed King, Donald Trump, so anything is possible. Hey, look at this last round of elections and the Trump Effect. And Pratt isn’t as weird or narcissistic as maybe some think who saw him younger on MTV.

We live in a strange world that seems like a movie. People don’t know many of the candidates. So men like Donald Trump (Celebrity Apprentice) and Spencer Pratt (The Hills) at least have created a body of work showing who they are. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was on The Real World.

Why the big bet? Maybe to influence the market. Maybe he believes in Pratt in a field of no-names outside of Karen Bass—the current leader in the polls at 30%—who doesn’t seem too well-liked. Pratt was at 22% with Nitha Raman at 19% (16% undecided),

The state of Minnesota became the first state in the union to try to pass a ban on prediction markets in the Land of 10,000 Lakes when Governor Tim Walz signed into law specific legislation making it an actual felony to host (or advertise) these exchanges in the state earlier this month.

But despite the scary sound of the headlines and the word ‘felony,’ we all knew that the US Commodity and Futures Exchange (CFTC) would snap back at the state that gave us Prince, and they did, immediately suing Minnesota as Michael Selig continues to hold a heavy regulatory hand.

The CFTC says prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are exclusively under federal regulation and don’t need the states regulating these very popular trading exchanges and consider it encroachment. With this happening in many states, a Supreme Court date may be coming.

The new Minnesota law is officially set to kick in on August 1, 2026. Stay tuned to this space.

The 2026 CONCACAF Champions Cup Final will be contested on Saturday with Liga MX sides Toluca and Tigres UANL meeting for all the enchiladas at Estadio Nemesio Díez Riega (Kikuyu Grass) in Toluca, Mexico (Paramount+, 8 ET/7 CT/5 PT). Cruz Azul won this tournament last year.

Organized by CONCACAF, this tourney is a 5-round KO tournament for clubs in Central America and North America. The winner of this match in Toluca will earn a berth in the 2029 FIFA World Club Cup as well as the 2026 FIFA Intercontinental Cup.

At Kalshi, traders are backing Paulinho (8 goals) and Deportivo Toluca Fútbol Club S.A. de C.V.—government name Toluca (52%)—over Rodrigo Aguirre (4 goals), Ozziel Herrera (3 goals), and Tigres UANL (27%) with a Draw (tie) trading at 28%.

➤Trading Thoughts: Toluca earned the homefield advantage here with the better record in the tournament, and these 8-time tournament champions rolled to this point, with Los Diablos Rojos ousting San Diego FC (6-3 agg), the LA Galaxy (7-2 agg), and LAFC (5-2 agg) to get to the Final.

With an attack led by Aguirre, and the Double Jesús’ of Jesús Angulo (3 goals) and Jesús Gallardo (3 goals), expect Toluca (2-0-3 L5) to probably score first and then a couple of times more for good measure vs Tigres UANL (4-0-1 L5). It’s never wise to bet against Jesús, even on Sábado Gigante.

UANL advanced to this match by defeating Forge FC (4-1 agg), FC Cincinnati (5-4 agg), the Seattle Sounders (3-3, agg Draw), and Nashville SC (2-0 agg), squeaking in while Toluca easily outscored its opponents 18-7. No club has won this tournament more times. ➤Trading Pick: Toluca 52¢

2026 CONCACAF Champions Cup Final at Polymarket

Some 538 teams started in this historic UK soccer tournament, the 2025-26 Women’s FA Cup, in August 2025, now we are down to just two, and two Women’s Super League (WSL) clubs in Manchester City and Brighton & Hove Albion. Chelsea are the defending tourney champions.

On Sunday, Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester City will fight to see who will now become the next champion in the Women’s FA Cup Final from historic Wembley Stadium (GrassMaster) in London, England early on Sunday (10 am EDT/9 CDT/8 MDT/7 PDT).

Manchester City got here by defeating defending champions Chelsea in AET (3-2) while BHA bounced Liverpool (3-2), so it was the upper tier teams who made it to London once again. After 505 games, the tournament has been very high-scoring (2,619 goals), averaging 5.19 GPG.

➤Trading Thoughts: We think everything is everywhere (in the US), but to trade or bet on this Women’s FA Cup Final, you’d have to look to offshore to a UK bookmaker as PMs Polymarket and Kalshi and online sportsbooks DraftKings and FanDuel had nothing (MCFC -900, BHA +1400).

When these two clubs met in 2025-26 WSL play, Manchester City WFC beat Madison Haley (3 goals) and BHA WFC 2-1 at Home in September with the Seagulls returning the favor with a 3-2 win of their own in April—the ladies’ last loss to date with MCFC 3-0-0 in May.

With Khadija Shaw (4 goals), Lauren Hemp (3 goals), and Laura Combs (3 goals), MCFC have the better attack. Manager Andrée Jeglertz and the Citizens won the WSL this year, ironically finishing ahead of 2nd-place Arsenal. Domestic double thoughts to motivate. Betting Pick: Manchester City

The 15th race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season will see the circuit in Opryland for the Cracker Barrel 400 from the Nashville Superspeedway (Concrete) in Nashville, Tennessee on Sunday and the last day of the merry, merry month of May (Prime, HBO Max, 10 ET/9 CT/7 PT).

At the 2026 Coca-Cola 600 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, NC last weekend on Sunday, May 24, we saw Daniel Suárez (Spire Motorsports) take the checkered flag the 34-year-old from Monterrey, Mexico won for the third time on the NASCAR circuit for his career.

At, Polymarket NASCAR bettors are backing Denny Hamlin (20%), Christopher Bell (14%), Tyler Reddick (11%), Ryan Blaney (11%), Kyle Larson (9%), Chase Briscoe (7%), William Byron (6%), Chase Elliott (6%), Ty Gibbs (6%), and Carson Hocevar (4%) to win in Nashville on Sunday.

➤Trading Thoughts: Last year, Ryan Blaney won the 2025 Cracker Barrel 400, finishing ahead of Carson Hocevar (2nd place) by 2.830 seconds and Denny Hamlin (3rd place). We gave you the NASCAR All-Star Race Winner (Denny Hamlin) a few weeks back here at The Prediction Report.

And with Hamlin finishing in third place a year ago, expect the #2 driver in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Standings to possibly be on the podium again, and maybe win this time to give Toyota its first win in the new race (Chevrolet 3 wins, Ford 2). ➤Race Winner Picks: Denny Hamlin 20¢, Chase Elliott 5¢

The next race up on the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series calendar will be the 200-lap, 400-mile FireKeepers Casino 400 from the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan on Sunday, June 7 (TV—HBO Max, PRIME; RADIO—SiriusXM, MRN, 3 EDT/2 CDT/1 MDT/12 PDT).

Click here to trade on the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Cracker Barrel 400 Winner at Kalshi

One of the biggest rivalries in professional sports renews this weekend when the Cubs (30-26, 11-13 Road) travel to Busch Stadium (Bermuda Grass) in St Louis to play the Cardinals (29-25, 13-13 Home) in an NL Central battle on Sunday night (NBC, Peacock, 7:20 EDT/4:20 PDT).

The starting scheduled pitchers for the game from a distance were RHP Edwin Cabrera (3-2, 4.00 ERA) for the Cubs with LHP Matthew Liberatore (2-2, 4.70 ERA) getting the pill for the Redbirds. Chicago hit a nasty 9-game losing streak to kill its buzz while St Louis is simply finding ways to win.

➤Trading Thoughts: Looking at the 2026 MLB Head-to-Head results between the Cubs and Cardinals, we see that Chicago was 8-5 vs St Louis last season, but just 3-4 in the Gateway City (5-1 at Wrigley Field). Along with TB and Milwaukee, the Cardinals have been money-makers.

Pete-Crow Armstrong, Ian Happ and the Cubs strangely rank #15 in Batting Average (.240) but are #2 in On Base Percentage (.337). Despite some high scores last season, runs may be scarce but remember the weather is warming and the ball will be carrying. Trading Pick: St Louis Cardinals

Click here to trade on MLB games at Robinhood

 ➠In the next issue of The Prediction Report, we’ll focus on the 2026 NBA Finals, where LeBron James will play next season , CBS’s 60 Minutes looking into trading on War, a Google employee busted for IT, a preview of the 2026 PGA The Memorial Tournament and 2026 FIFA World Cup previews for Groups A-F, including the USMNT. Thanks for reading this cutting-edge and fun bi-weekly newsletter for PM traders, sports bettors, and news freaks..