NextFin News - Prediction markets moved $44.8 billion in a single month this June, more than triple the roughly $14 billion in average monthly handle across every legal sportsbook in the United States. The question no longer debated in boardrooms is whether event-contract platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket threaten traditional sportsbooks. It is whether the sportsbooks' own response — launching rival prediction products in every state — will preserve their growth or accelerate the erosion of the taxed, state-regulated model that has funded it.
The two U.S. market-share leaders answered the threat by joining it. DraftKings Predictions went live December 19, 2025, in 38 states, including California, Texas and Georgia, where traditional sports betting remains illegal. FanDuel Predicts followed on December 22, 2025, and by January 15, 2026, was available in all 50 states, with sports event contracts offered in 18 of them. Both operators exited the American Gaming Association in November 2025, breaking with the industry lobby that has argued prediction markets siphon sports-betting tax revenue from states.
This is not a cyclical scare. It is a structural re-sorting of the U.S. wagering industry, and the decisive battleground is not odds quality or app design — it is jurisdiction. The operator that controls distribution in the states that have not legalized sports betting controls the next decade of customer acquisition, even if that means cannibalizing its own taxed handle along the way.
The Scale of the Shift
Kalshi, the largest CFTC-regulated event-contract platform in the United States, recorded $31.5 billion in trading volume in June 2026, roughly three times the $10.8 billion logged by Polymarket that month. Combined, the two platforms moved $44.8 billion — more than triple the roughly $14 billion average monthly handle of all legal U.S. sportsbooks in 2025. Sports dominate the mix. Since July 2024, sports have accounted for 80 percent of Kalshi's total trading volume but only 39 percent of Polymarket's, with politics and cryptocurrency making up most of the difference.
The growth trajectory is steep. Combined monthly global trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket rose from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion by April 2026, according to Pew Research Center, before World Cup-driven demand pushed June to its record. The valuation gap tells a split story. Kalshi closed a $1 billion Series F round in May 2026 at a $22 billion valuation. Polymarket, backed by a $600 million investment from Intercontinental Exchange — the parent of the New York Stock Exchange — has been raising at a $15 billion valuation, despite trading at roughly one-third of Kalshi's monthly volume. Investors are not pricing Polymarket purely on current throughput; they are pricing its global user base and brand reach, while Kalshi's premium reflects its U.S. regulatory clearance and institutional-grade market structure.
The sportsbooks themselves are not shrinking — yet the market is pricing them as if they are. DraftKings reported revenue of $1.41 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up 20 percent year over year on sportsbook handle of $13.9 billion, and $1.51 billion in the second quarter on handle of nearly $11.5 billion. Full-year 2025 revenue came in at $6.05 billion, up 27 percent from $4.77 billion in 2024, and the company posted its first positive annual net income, $3.7 million, versus a $507.3 million loss the year before. But DraftKings trades at roughly 18 times 2026 adjusted EBITDA, while FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment trades at about 12 times, according to analyst estimates. Both stocks fell 25 to 30 percent from recent highs on prediction-market fears, and over a longer window DraftKings is down more than 50 percent over the past year while Flutter is down close to 69 percent.
Why Sportsbooks Chose to Become the Threat
The strategic logic is defensive distribution. Prediction markets are accessible in states where sports betting has not been legalized — California, Texas and Georgia among them — because they operate under federal commodities oversight rather than state gambling licenses. For DraftKings and FanDuel, which have spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring customers state by state, the arrival of Kalshi and Polymarket in those markets posed a structural threat: a user who downloads a prediction-market app today becomes a loyal customer before the state ever legalizes traditional sports betting.
By launching their own prediction products, the operators convert a threat into an on-ramp. Users in non-legalized states can download the apps, create accounts and deposit funds now; when those states eventually legalize sports betting, DraftKings and FanDuel already own the customer relationship, the app and the payment rail. The alternative — leaving the field to Kalshi and Polymarket — would have meant ceding the next wave of legalization before it began.
This mirrors the dynamic of daily fantasy sports in 2015, when FanDuel and DraftKings were already operating in states that had not yet regulated them and legislatures rushed to codify a market that was already functioning. Prediction markets are, in effect, daily fantasy sports 2.0: the unregulated activity that forces legislative action. The American Gaming Association estimates prediction markets have diverted more than $500 million in potential sports-betting tax revenue away from states. Illinois attempted to stop that leakage with a 15 percent tax on prediction-market sports contracts; Kalshi sued, arguing the state has no authority over a federally regulated product. Similar fights are underway in Nevada, New Jersey and Maryland.
"As the company's business strategy evolves – including with prediction markets – DraftKings determined that its plans no longer fully align with the AGA's direction in certain areas and have decided to relinquish its membership," a DraftKings spokesperson said when both operators ended their AGA membership in November 2025.
The cost of that strategy is visible in the guidance. DraftKings' 2026 revenue guidance of $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion and adjusted EBITDA guidance of $700 million to $900 million explicitly reflect "expected investment in DraftKings Predictions," according to the company's SEC filing. Flutter expects approximately $50 million in market-making revenue for 2026 — and reported just $6 million of it in the second quarter — while cutting its full-year U.S. adjusted EBITDA guidance by 22 percent and announcing the departure of CEO Peter Jackson after nine years. Dan Taylor takes over October 1.
The Counter-Thesis: An Unassailable Parlay Moat
The bear case against the prediction-market threat is not trivial, and it rests on a structural difference that no amount of capital can erase. Traditional sportsbooks are principals: they set the odds and take the other side of every wager, which means instant execution on any combination of props a bettor wants to string together. Prediction markets are exchanges: they must match buyers with sellers, and that matching problem explodes combinatorially.
A typical NFL game might carry 50 or more prop markets. The number of possible three-leg parlays is 50 × 49 × 48, or 117,600 combinations. For four-leg parlays, the figure exceeds 5 million. No market maker will provide continuous two-sided liquidity on millions of permutations for every game. On a sportsbook, a bettor clicks and the bet is placed. On an exchange, the bettor may wait for a quote that never arrives, or accept a spread wide enough to erase any odds advantage.
The margin data supports the moat. Industry estimates put parlays at 67 to 70 percent of sportsbook revenue and up to 85 percent of profits, while comprising 54 to 72 percent of total wagers. State data corroborates the economics: in Maryland, bettors spent 36 percent of their sports-betting dollars on parlays, but those bets generated 67 percent of sportsbook revenue. In New Jersey, sportsbooks kept 20 percent of the money wagered on parlays this year versus 5 percent on all other bets. Straight-bet hold runs roughly 5 to 7 percent; structural sportsbook hold sits at 11 to 13 percent — FanDuel posted 13.6 percent in the second quarter of 2025, compared with 10.4 percent at DraftKings in the first quarter. That gap is almost entirely attributable to parlays, which exchanges cannot replicate at scale.
There is also a customer-segmentation argument. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins has said the company's internal data estimates that 80 to 90 percent of prediction-market consumer volume comes from betting syndicates and institutional traders — a different species of bettor than the recreational parlay player who funds sportsbook profits. On this reading, prediction markets and sportsbooks occupy adjacent but distinct ecosystems, and the cannibalization fear is overblown.
That counter-thesis is powerful on product design. It is weaker on distribution. A moat that protects profits on existing customers does nothing to stop a competitor from owning the next customer before the sportsbook ever meets them. And the exchange's liquidity problem is being attacked directly: DraftKings' strategy of owning all three layers of prediction markets — brokerage, exchange and market maker — is an explicit attempt to solve the quoting bottleneck that has constrained Kalshi and Polymarket.
The Legal Battlefield Will Decide the Winner
The outcome of this competition will be settled in courtrooms, not app stores. On February 19, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee granted Kalshi a preliminary injunction, accepting the platform's argument that the federal Commodity Exchange Act preempts state gambling law. On April 6, 2026, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a similar ruling in Kalshi's favor against New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement.
But the wins are not uniform. Massachusetts' Superior Court rejected Kalshi's preemption argument as "overly broad" and granted an injunction against the platform effective March 8, 2026. In Nevada, a state court has barred Kalshi from offering sports, election and entertainment event contracts since April 2026, and the Nevada Supreme Court declined to pause that order on July 1, 2026. In Ohio, a federal court denied Kalshi's request to block a $5 million state fine. As of July 2026, Kalshi faces active state court proceedings in Washington, New York, Ohio and Nevada, with litigation pending in Utah and Georgia.
The federal regulator has so far declined to take the states' side. On September 17, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it would not recommend enforcement against certain providers of online prediction markets and crypto trading — a signal that Washington is not inclined to shut the industry down. Internationally, the risk runs the other way: Brazil blocked access to Polymarket, Kalshi and roughly two dozen other prediction platforms in April 2026 after a federal resolution banned event-based contracts tied to elections, sports and entertainment.
What Comes Next: Three Scenarios
Base case. The legal patchwork persists: federal preemption holds in some states, state enforcement prevails in others, and prediction markets continue to grow fastest in the states without legal sports betting. DraftKings and FanDuel use their prediction products as customer-acquisition funnels, converting users to taxed sportsbooks as legalization spreads. The tax leakage the AGA cites becomes the political lever that finally breaks the logjam in California, Texas and Georgia — the three largest untapped markets in the country.
Upside case for sportsbooks. Courts side decisively with the states, forcing prediction markets to obtain state gambling licenses. Kalshi and Polymarket lose their distribution advantage, and the sportsbooks' parlay moat reasserts itself. Margins stabilize, promotional spending normalizes, and the 2026 de-rating of DraftKings and Flutter reverses.
Downside case for sportsbooks. Federal preemption is affirmed broadly, and prediction markets achieve the liquidity and quoting speed that currently limit their parlay offerings. In that world, the taxed sportsbook becomes a niche product for bettors who value instant execution over odds, while the bulk of handle migrates to exchange-based platforms that operate outside state tax and compliance regimes. The $500 million in diverted tax revenue the AGA cites would be only the beginning.
The falsifying signal for the base case is concrete: if, by the end of 2027, California, Texas and Georgia have not legalized sports betting despite prediction-market availability in all three, then the "catalyst" thesis is wrong and the sportsbooks have paid customer-acquisition costs for a funnel that leads nowhere. Conversely, if any one of those three states legalizes and licenses sports betting in 2026 or 2027 with DraftKings or FanDuel among the first licensees, the distribution-on-ramp thesis is confirmed.
The Bottom Line
The rise of prediction markets is not killing sportsbooks — it is forcing them to become prediction-market companies. The operators that survive this transition are not the ones with the best odds on Saturday's games; they are the ones that own the customer relationship in the states where Saturday's games cannot yet be bet legally. The parlay moat protects today's profits. Distribution in California, Texas and Georgia determines who collects tomorrow's.
The market has priced this as a zero-sum threat to sportsbooks. The more likely outcome is a bifurcated industry: exchanges capture the sophisticated, odds-sensitive bettor and the unregulated geographies, while sportsbooks retain the recreational parlay player and the regulated states — with DraftKings and FanDuel straddling both worlds and paying for the privilege in compressed near-term margins. Fall 2026 will produce the first serious evidence on which strategy was right.
更多独家洞察尽在 nextfin.ai.
