The World Cup delivered a massive summer for sports betting and prediction-market platforms, but executives across the industry are preparing for the real fight: the NFL season.
During second-quarter earnings calls this week, executives from Penn Entertainment, BetMGM, and FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment all touched on the high levels of activity their platforms have seen this summer due to the World Cup. The same goes for prediction-market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Analysts at Jefferies noted the tournament generated a “record $20 billion” in prediction-market volumes, “by far the single biggest” event for prediction markets to date, “far exceeding volumes” from the previous largest event, the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
But the crown jewel of the U.S. sports betting calendar, the NFL season, is right around the corner. The preseason begins next week, and the regular season kicks off Sept. 9.
Penn Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden said on the company’s earnings call Thursday that the NFL season is expected to bring “quite the arms race this year.”
He noted that many prediction-market platforms really launched NFL event contracts only around Super Bowl LX, a game which by itself saw more than $1 billion in prediction-market trading volume across platforms including Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood, Crypto.com, Underdog, and others.
When it comes to traditional sports betting, the American Gaming Association estimated in January that Americans would legally wager roughly $1.76 billion on Super Bowl LX.
Snowden noted Penn is prepared for the NFL season to bring with it “very aggressive, irrational” marketing and advertising spending from all competitors, which are always fighting to acquire more customers. Truist analysts said 70% of Penn’s online sportsbooks users made at least one bet on the World Cup, and 45% of those were the first soccer wager they’d ever placed; management “believes this could provide a tailwind for re-engagement into NFL season,” they wrote.
BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt offered a similar assessment of the landscape. His company saw “crazy, massive handle growth” during the World Cup. He noted that handle—or total dollars bet by customers—for the U.S.-Belgium round-of-16 game alone was “more than any baseball playoff, basketball playoff game, any World Series game.”
“Competition is fierce,” Greenblatt said, specifically pointing to the rise of prediction markets as a “primary macro impact.”
FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment echoed that sentiment on the company’s earnings call Wednesday, which discussed big plans to boost its prediction-market product in time for the NFL season. Before the start of the regular season, FanDuel Predicts will be integrated into the company’s unified “one app,” which will allow fans to access its traditional sports betting, casino, fantasy sports, and prediction-market products in a single app. (DraftKings, whose earnings call is Friday, has also launched a one-stop shop app, which it calls a “super app,” that includes its prediction-market platform.)
The World Cup helped FanDuel reach its highest-ever traditional sports betting volume for June and July, and the company is “seeing really strong volumes” for MLB games.
“But ultimately, performance will be determined by football season,” Flutter CFO Rob Coldrake said.
