DraftKings Says It Will Stay Disciplined on Prediction Markets Heading Into Football Season

DraftKings CEO Jason Robins spent most of Friday’s second-quarter earnings call fielding questions about prediction markets, and he made clear the company plans to grow its exchange business the same disciplined way it built its sportsbook a decade ago. With the NFL and college football seasons approaching, Robins said DraftKings is applying hard-won lifetime value modeling from its sports betting days to the newer, faster-growing predictions vertical rather than chasing growth without data to back it up.

“As the economics go, we’re looking at this in a way that is very similar to how we evolved in sportsbook,” Robins told analysts. “We started off, we had an LTV (lifetime value) model that we built in the early days of sportsbook. We were pretty cautious because we didn’t have a lot of data.” He added that DraftKings now has comparable sportsbook data to lean on for customer acquisition assumptions, even if modeling the ultimate monetization of prediction-market customers remains less certain. “I think we’ve been very careful and disciplined in how we’re doing that,” he said. “We’re not assuming major increases that we don’t have line of sight to.”

Predictions Business Already Outpacing Expectations

The caution hasn’t slowed momentum. DraftKings’ predictions offering, which launched earlier in 2026, has already attracted more than 600,000 customers and seen annualized trading volume grow roughly five times over from April to July, reaching $11 billion in July alone. Consumer volume hit $3.6 billion annualized while market-maker volume reached $7.4 billion annualized. Robins said the company actually spent 10% more than planned on customer acquisition for predictions after finding costs came in about 25% lower per customer than projected.

DraftKings plans to invest an incremental $200 million to $300 million in predictions during fiscal 2026 across marketing, product, and technology — spending management described as data-driven rather than a blank check. The company’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated exchange, DK Exchange, is being phased in ahead of the college football and NFL seasons, and Robins said the goal is to “try to port as much of that volume over to the exchange as fast as is reasonably possible.” Bettors weighing whether to try the platform for themselves can check the latest DraftKings Predictions promo code before the season gets underway.

Addressing the Cannibalization Question

A recurring theme from analysts was whether prediction markets are simply siphoning existing sportsbook bettors rather than creating new revenue. Robins pushed back directly, saying DraftKings has found only about 1% crossover between users of its sportsbook and prediction-market products in legal betting states. He estimated 80% to 90% of prediction-market volume in those states comes from professional betting syndicates and institutional traders — volume he argued would likely never have flowed to a traditional sportsbook anyway. “We looked at a lot of internal data, also used some third-party data, and we have a number of different ways that we’ve triangulated various metrics to come to the same conclusion, which is there is very minimal, if any, cannibalization happening,” Robins said.

He also noted predictions are drawing meaningfully different customers in states without regulated sports betting, such as California and Texas, where DraftKings’ unified Super App now offers a sportsbook-like experience built entirely around prediction contracts. More than half of predictions users have already wagered on combos — the prediction-market equivalent of parlays — which account for roughly 20% of total volume, and users can now access about 30 markets per game across the NBA, MLB, and WNBA.

A Mixed Quarter, But Guidance Holds

The optimism around predictions came against a bumpier core quarter. DraftKings reported revenue of $1.44 billion, down from $1.51 billion a year earlier, with results falling short of Wall Street estimates due to what the company called an approximately $80 million headwind from customer-friendly sports outcomes. The company posted a quarterly loss of $67.6 million, compared with a profit of $157.9 million in the same period last year. Despite the miss, DraftKings maintained its full-year guidance of $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion in revenue and $700 million to $900 million in adjusted EBITDA, with management emphasizing the core sportsbook business remains on track to generate roughly $1 billion in adjusted EBITDA on its own — comfortably funding the incremental predictions investment.

With Kalshi holding a substantial early lead in the prediction-markets space and rival Flutter recently ousting longtime FanDuel CEO Peter Jackson, the competitive stakes heading into football season are high. Robins framed DraftKings’ position as one built on patience rather than panic, betting that the same disciplined playbook that turned it into a sportsbook leader will eventually do the same for its predictions exchange as bettors flock to NFL and college football markets this fall.