DraftKings Goes on the Attack Against Kalshi After Mixed Q2
CEO Jason Robins used a CNBC appearance and earnings call to call out prediction market rivals while reporting $1.99 billion in Q2 sports revenue. About 600,000 DraftKings customers have now touched the predictions platform.
A Busy Morning in Boston
On a Thursday morning in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins sat down with CNBC’s Squawk Box to talk about one of the most contested corners of American sports finance right now: prediction markets. The timing was deliberate. DraftKings was hours away from releasing its second-quarter earnings, and Robins had things to say before the analysts got their turn.
The questions from CNBC’s Joe Kernan centered on Kalshi and Polymarket, two prediction platforms that have grown fast enough to earn valuations north of $20 billion, according to reporting by iGaming Business. Kalshi in particular has reached $39.7 billion in annualized trading volume so far in 2026, making it the putative market leader in the space. Robins, asked whether those companies had capitalized on a regulatory loophole, said DraftKings welcomes the competition. Then he went further.
Robins accused the newer platforms of “spinning narratives that just aren’t true,” specifically targeting what he called a persistent myth that prediction market operators have no incentive to see customers win or lose. His argument: that framing conveniently ignores the reality that recreational bettors often end up as counterparties to institutional market makers armed with serious quantitative tools. Letting that narrative stand unchallenged, Robins suggested, could cause “long-term harm to the trust of the industry.”
As of the time of reporting, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour had not responded to Robins’ comments on X. The two executives do share at least one piece of common ground: both were appointed to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Innovation Advisory Committee earlier this year.
The Numbers Behind the Words
About an hour after the television appearance, Robins took questions from Wall Street analysts on the earnings call itself. The results were, by his own framing, a mixed bag worth putting in context.
DraftKings posted sports revenue of $1.99 billion for Q2 2026, up nearly 6% from the same quarter in 2025, per iGaming Business. That is a meaningful number, and the company used the quarter to formally consolidate its online sportsbook, retail sportsbook, and prediction markets revenue into a single reporting segment. No separate breakout was provided for prediction-related revenue.
What DraftKings did share was an engagement figure: approximately 600,000 customers have interacted with the predictions platform since the start of the year. That is not a trivial audience, but it also underscores how much ground DraftKings has to cover relative to Kalshi’s trading volumes. Robins was candid that the company still lags behind Kalshi in predictions.
DKeX and the Fall Setup
The launch of DKeX, DraftKings’ proprietary prediction market exchange, happened just a few weeks before the earnings call. The product is the operational centerpiece of DraftKings’ push into predictions, and it is built to sit alongside the company’s existing sportsbook rather than replace it. That is a structural difference from Kalshi and Polymarket, which do not operate traditional online sports betting platforms.
Robins did not spend much time looking backward during the call. Most of the strategic energy, according to the iGaming Business report, was directed at the upcoming NFL season. Football has historically been the engine that drives DraftKings’ sportsbook revenue, and with DKeX now live, the company is hoping that the same customer base that wagers on games will migrate toward prediction contracts.
The broader competitive picture is still taking shape. Prediction markets have attracted serious institutional and retail interest in 2026, and regulators at the CFTC are actively working through questions about how these products should be governed. DraftKings’ decision to roll predictions into its core sports segment suggests the company is treating this as a permanent part of the business, not an experiment running on a separate track.
Whether 600,000 engaged customers can scale into something that rivals Kalshi’s trading volumes before the season ends is the question Robins will be asked to answer again on the next earnings call.
How much revenue did DraftKings report in Q2 2026?
DraftKings reported sports revenue of $1.99 billion for the second quarter of 2026, a roughly 6% increase from the same period in 2025, according to iGaming Business.
What is DKeX?
DKeX is DraftKings' proprietary prediction market exchange, launched a few weeks before the Q2 earnings call as part of the company's effort to integrate predictions into its broader sports offerings.
How does Kalshi's trading volume compare to DraftKings?
Kalshi, described as the putative market leader in predictions, had recorded $39.7 billion in annualized trading volume so far in 2026, according to the source reporting. DraftKings disclosed that around 600,000 of its customers had engaged with its predictions platform since the start of the year but did not release a separate revenue breakout for that segment.
What criticism did Jason Robins level at Kalshi and Polymarket?
Robins accused both companies of perpetuating what he called a myth that they have no incentive to see people win or lose, arguing that recreational customers often serve as counterparties to institutional market makers equipped with sophisticated quantitative tools. He called this framing potentially harmful to long-term trust in the industry.