DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said Friday that the DraftKings Predictions business is growing faster than the company expected, and suggested that there is barely any overlap between sportsbook customers and the wider prediction markets audience.
Robins described his company’s Q2 results as “fantastic” on an Aug. 7 earnings call. The company reported that its total revenue fell 4.6% year over year, adjusted EBITDA plunged 62% to $115m, and the operator posted a $67m net loss for the quarter.
Based on the comments he made in a letter to DraftKings shareholders and on Thursday’s call, the progress of the Predictions business pleases the chief executive the most.
“Our newly launched predictions offering is growing faster than we anticipated,” Robins told analysts.
New Predictions users fueling DraftKings
He added that more than 600,000 customers engaged with Predictions in the first half of 2026, a pace that he said “far surpassed our expectations.”
Across its entire business, customer acquisition increased almost 75% year over year, which Robins said equated to approximately 30% more customers in the latest quarter than the company had expected.
DraftKings is live with mobile sports betting in 27 states, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico. On the state-regulated side, DraftKings’ sports wagering handle increased 11% year over year, and the company reported that its handle share across regulated sportsbook states improved on 2025 for a third straight quarter.
Sports on DraftKings is a near-nationwide product, as the company now also offers sports in 18 other states via the Predictions vertical it launched in December. Its combined Sports Consumer Volume (which includes both online sportsbook bets and predictions sports contracts) was $13.1bn, an increase of $1.7bn (15%) on the same period in 2025.
Between April and July, its annualized total trading volume across its entire Predictions product almost quintupled from $2.3bn to $11bn.
Robins: ‘Combos has been an absolute smash’
DraftKings has ramped up its predictions offering in recent months, including launching its own in-house DKeX exchange in June, and earning National Futures Association approval as a futures commission merchant (FCM) in July.
Those developments allow it to make its own markets and offer them not only on its own platform but others, too. Robins said that DraftKings markets are live on three trading exchanges, and touted his company as the only operator that has all of a brokerage, an exchange, and a market-maker up and running right now.
DraftKings also added more parlay-style “Combos” via Crypto.com. In total, DraftKings Predictions now offers more than 30 markets per MLB, NBA, and WNBA game, including prop-style player and per-innings markets.
Robins said that more than half of the 600,000 new predictions users have engaged with those markets, which are approaching 20% of the company’s total predictions volume. “Combos has been an absolute smash.”
In total, DraftKings Predictions now offers more than 30 markets per MLB, NBA, and WNBA game, including prop-style player and per-innings markets. Robins’ co-founder Paul Liberman suggested earlier this year that a “microbet” style of prediction market could be the next industry development.
DraftKings reports ‘massive’ acquisition outside regulated states
As for the 600,000 new predictions customers, Robins said DraftKings is seeing “massive” amounts of new customers in states that do not offer legal state-regulated sports betting. Industry estimates suggest that those are the regions of the country in which the majority of sports prediction markets activity is happening.
He added that in those states, such as California and Texas, DraftKings Predictions is seeing a very similar profile of sports customer to the kind it gets on its Sportsbook in regulated states.
DraftKings is prepared to pump money into that opportunity. Robins outlined plans for $200m to $300m in additional spend on Predictions this year, and added that DraftKings is spending a lot on its marketing campaigns with partners such as ESPN, NBC, Amazon, sports leagues, and more, in part because that now engages far more customers in many more states than it did before DraftKings Predictions existed.
“That in itself is a huge advantage for us,” Robins added.
Once that messaging hits home, the CEO suggested, the already above-expectations customer acquisition on the Predictions side will only gather more pace
“There are a lot of states that DraftKings has not operated in for many years that have been seeing national advertising,” he noted. “I do believe there’s an education period that needs to occur for people to understand that, actually, if you are in California or Texas, you can use DraftKings now.
“That’s something we started to do in the World Cup, and I think it will really become apparent in the NFL season. When you start to see that broader awareness really take hold, that’s when you’re going to see much, much faster customer acquisition come in.”
Almost no crossover between bettors and traders, says Robins
Robins also maintained what he and other executives such as outgoing Flutter CEO Peter Jackson have stated in recent months: sports prediction markets do not cannibalize sports betting.
“There is very minimal, if any, cannibalization happening,” the DraftKings CEO said. He added that the company’s analysis suggests that there is only around 1% customer overlap between its sportsbook and the largest prediction market operator in sportsbook states, which is Kalshi.
“These platforms are drawing a fundamentally different, and largely professional, audience,” Robins said. DraftKings estimates that between 80% and 90% of sports prediction market consumer volume in sportsbook states comes from professional betting syndicates and institutional traders, which is volume Robins said that his company’s sportsbook would not have had.
“This continues to strengthen our confidence that Predictions is a large and incremental opportunity … It’s not something that we believe will ever be cannibalistic.”
While FanDuel cuts guidance, DraftKings holds steady
As for what comes next, Robins said that the company will shift its sports prediction markets onto its own platform in the coming months, moving away from using other exchanges.
“We will phase DKeX Exchange in,” he explained. “Our expectation is that the vast majority of our sports content, at least in the major sports that are going on this fall, starting with CFB and NFL, we’re going to try to port as much of that volume over to the exchange as fast as is reasonably possible.”
In terms of outlook for the rest of the year, unlike FanDuel parent Flutter, which cut its U.S. adjusted EBITDA guidance by 22% this week amid its own losses, DraftKings held firm on its full-year guidance, which forecasts revenue of $6.5bn to $6.9bn and adjusted EBITDA of $700m to $900m.
After DraftKings’ share price dipped on Thursday evening upon publication of the bottom-line results, the graph swung back upwards on Friday after the call. It was hovering at around $23.25 per share at the time of writing, up from $21.40 on Thursday evening. Over the last 12 months, DraftKings’ stock is down roughly 51% from $48 in late August 2025.
