During their 2024 Q4 earnings calls, CEOs of Robinhood, Coinbase, and DraftKings were asked about prediction markets. All three expressed interest in offering them in the future and remarked on prediction markets’ potential in their industries.
Prediction markets have important implications for the finance, gambling, and crypto industries. PredictIt has offered political prediction markets since 2014, and Kalshi’s lawsuit led to commercial event contracts for the 2024 presidential election. Sporttrade has offered prediction markets on sports since 2022 one state at a time under sports betting law. Polymarket offers many markets with crypto trades instead of state-issued currencies but does so outside of American jurisdiction.
Given prediction markets’ appeal to customers who want information, a hedging tool, or an entertainment product, it’s no surprise to see some of the largest companies in diverse industries take interest in them.
Robinhood: ‘Prediction markets are the future’
Financial Industry Analysis: Traders and investors can use prediction to hedge on any event that could impact them financially. For example, a trader could place an amount of money they were willing to lose in a market on whether GDP growth will pass a certain threshold. A payout would cushion financial losses from the event, and an event failing to occur would lead to losses analogous to insurance payments.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was asked about medium and long-term plans for prediction markets after briefly listing Kalshi’s sports event contracts before the Super Bowl.
Tenev: “I think prediction markets are the future. I think they’re the future not just as an active trading asset, but also news and information.
“And Robinhoods’ going to be right there leading the way. I think we’re going to continue to innovate, and you saw this last year when we launched the presidential election market. So, we were one of the few platforms that offered the ability to trade the election. And that was very successful for us.
“We had over half a billion contracts traded in right around a week leading up to the election. And so, what you should expect from us is a comprehensive events platform that will give access to prediction markets across a wide variety of contracts later this year. So, the team has been hard at work at that.
“As with any new innovative asset class, we’re pushing the boundaries here, and there’s not regulatory clarity across all of it yet, in particular, sports, which you mentioned. But we believe in it, and we’re going to be a leader. So, you should expect us to not just offer it, but continue to drive and push for regulatory clarity industrywide.”
Coinbase: ‘The world kind of got a wake-up call on these prediction markets’
Crypto Industry Analysis: One of the earliest goals of cryptocurrencies was to reduce dependence on centralized banks and other institutions. Prediction markets can aggregate information to create a forecast of how likely an event is. The pricing system creates an event’s probability that serves as its price. Consequently, prediction markets are popular crypto products, even outside of Polymarket.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was asked about competitors using global markets for political betting and whether his company would pursue similar offerings.
Armstrong : “Yeah, so we are not — we have nothing to announce today on that front, but I do think prediction markets are very exciting. I touched on it a little bit in my opening remarks.
“But I think the — really the United States, but the world kind of got a wake-up call on these prediction markets in this recent election. I think, it was — some of these were like that in the top few downloaded apps in the app stores during the election. And they called the election correctly, far in advance of every other traditional source that was just flat wrong. And so, this is answering a big — crypto is like the answer to this major question people have in society today, which is how do I know what’s true.
“Everybody is worried about misinformation. They’re worried about bias. And the beautiful thing about these prediction markets is that people have real skin in the game. And so, I actually think it’s a better source of truth than what we’re seeing in many traditional media publications.
“And if you look at the surveys around people’s trust and institutions. It’s like the traditional media, etc., it’s at an all-time low. So it’s just one more example where I think crypto can provide an interesting solution. We are interested in looking at it more over time.”
DraftKings: ‘We are watching it very actively’
Sports Betting Industry Analysis: Sporttrade was the first to market sports prediction markets to five states since 2022, offering a more seamless live betting experience than traditional sportsbooks. Prediction markets’ popularity during the 2024 presidential election and the 2025 Super Bowl further piqued analysts’ and gambling companies’ interest in the prediction market model.
DraftKings CEO Jason Robins was asked about DraftKings’ “initial take” on federally regulated sports prediction markets.
Robins: “Yeah. I do think you’re right. It’s early. We are watching it very actively. It’s certainly something that we have keen interest in seeing how it plays out. So I think there’s some, in the next couple of months, 60 days or so, there’s going to be a CFTC ruling and all sorts of other things, so I think we’ll know a lot more over the next few months.”
