The DraftKings/FanDuel Super PAC Raised $48M to Fight for Prediction Markets — Here’s What Happens Next
DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics, and Bet365 pooled $48M into the Win for America super PAC — but their simultaneous launch of CFTC prediction market products creates a strange paradox at the heart of their political strategy.
The sports betting industry has assembled its largest political war chest ever. DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics, and Bet365 — all members of the Sports Betting Alliance — have collectively contributed $48 million to Win for America, a super PAC that is now deploying that money across state elections with the explicit goal of expanding legal sports betting. The fundraising, first reported by Axios, disclosed $41 million in the most recent public filing period with Bet365 adding another $7 million afterward. The PAC has already committed more than $20 million to primary elections in six states. What happens next is a more complicated story than it first appears.
The Money and Where It Is Going
Win for America operates by funding state-level political action committees, targeting races where outcomes could influence sports betting legislation. The PAC’s current focus includes Texas and Georgia, neither of which has legal sports betting, as well as North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and New York. The rationale varies by state: in Alabama and Georgia, the PAC is building relationships for future legalization efforts. In Illinois and Pennsylvania — states with some of the highest sports betting tax rates in the country — the investment appears aimed at supporting candidates who would resist further tax increases or back iGaming expansion.
Win for America has indicated it could deploy funds in as many as 15 additional states as the 2026 midterm election cycle heats up. The scale of the operation reflects a calculated shift in how the sportsbook industry engages with the political system. Individual lobbying and traditional legislative testimony have been the industry’s primary tools for years. A $48 million super PAC represents a more aggressive posture — one designed to influence who writes the laws, not just argue for them after the fact.
The Prediction Market Paradox
The political spending exists in a strange tension with what is simultaneously happening at the companies doing the spending. The emergence of CFTC-regulated prediction markets was a core motivation for the super PAC’s creation: sportsbook executives have concluded that prediction markets, which operate under federal commodity trading rules rather than state gambling licenses, could eat into their businesses in unlicensed states. The logic is that state legislators, seeing prediction markets capture users without paying state taxes, might be more willing to legalize traditional sports betting to protect their revenue base.
The complication is that DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics have each launched their own prediction market products. DraftKings acquired Railbird Technologies, a CFTC-licensed exchange, and rolled out DraftKings Predictions. FanDuel launched FanDuel Predicts promo through a partnership with the CME Group. Both companies are now offering event contracts in states where they cannot operate traditional sportsbooks, including California and Texas. So the very companies funding a PAC to expand state-licensed sports betting are simultaneously building federally regulated prediction market platforms that circumvent state licensing requirements.
That contradiction has not gone unnoticed at state gaming commissions. Several states have pushed back against prediction market products operating within their borders without state licenses, arguing that the CFTC framework does not preempt state gambling authority. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission under the current administration has taken a broadly favorable view of prediction markets, endorsing them rather than attempting to restrict them. That regulatory split — a market-friendly CFTC against state gaming regulators asserting jurisdiction — is the central battleground.
Kalshi, CFTC Preemption, and the Fragmentation Problem
Kalshi, the prediction market platform that successfully sued the CFTC to allow election contracts in 2024, has been the most aggressive actor in this space and continues to expand its product offerings. The company has made clear it intends to operate nationally under CFTC authority regardless of state gaming laws. Three states have drawn legal challenges from the CFTC over attempts to restrict prediction market activity, creating a patchwork of contested jurisdiction that is becoming harder to navigate for operators and bettors alike.
The industry’s $48 million in political spending is designed in part to prevent that fragmentation from becoming permanent. If enough states legalize and tax traditional sports betting, the political will to block federally regulated prediction markets diminishes. But if the prediction market industry continues growing faster than traditional sportsbooks can expand, the leverage shifts — and the value of $48 million in Super PAC spending may be less than it appears.
What the Next Chapter Looks Like
Win for America’s deployment of funds in the 2026 midterm cycle will provide the first real test of whether large-scale political spending by sportsbooks can produce measurable legislative outcomes. Texas and Georgia are the headline targets — both are large markets where legalization has stalled for years, and both have active advocacy ecosystems that the PAC can support.
For bettors, the longer-term significance is whether this political push accelerates legal sports betting access in states that have been holding out, or whether it primarily benefits existing operators in high-tax states by suppressing further tax increases. Both outcomes are plausible; the answer likely depends on state-by-state political dynamics more than on the size of the war chest.
What is clear is that the sportsbook industry is treating 2026 as a pivotal year — one in which the regulatory architecture for both traditional betting and prediction markets will be contested at the state and federal level simultaneously. The $48 million is the opening bid in that fight.