Key Takeaways
- Robinhood takes minority stakes in Crypto.com and OG.com, priced at a $20B valuation.
- Football event contracts start routing to OG.com’s CFTC-regulated exchange on Sept. 8.
- Robinhood’s event contract revenue hit a record $156 million in the second quarter.
‘The beginning of a very strategic relationship’
Robinhood Markets announced the multiyear agreement on Sept. 8, naming OG.com as an infrastructure and clearing partner for its prediction markets business, which operates a derivatives exchange and clearinghouse regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission- Selected football contracts began routing there on Tuesday, ahead of the U.S. professional football season.
Robinhood said the stakes will be priced in line with Citadel Securities’ recent investment in Crypto.com at a $20 billion valuation, including $5 billion for the recently spun-off OG.com. Citadel took stakes in both companies in July, valuing them at $15 billion and $5 billion, respectively. Ownership percentages, investment amounts, and governance rights were not disclosed. Crypto.com has said it spun OG out into a standalone company.
The company was already working with more than one exchange. Robinhood entered prediction markets through Kalshi, the largest U.S. platform, and separately launched Rothera, a derivatives exchange focused on event contracts, with Susquehanna International Group. The move runs against the direction the sector took earlier this year. Analysts at Bernstein noted in June that every major consumer-facing prediction platform had moved to own both its customer base and its exchange, with Coinbase buying The Clearing Company and Draftkings dropping Crypto.com to launch its own venue, DKeX. Robinhood has gone the other way, sending volume to a third party and buying into it rather than replacing it.
Notably, OG’s operating entity sued Washington’s attorney general and gambling commissioners in July, asking a federal court to declare the state’s gambling laws preempted as applied to its exchange before any enforcement action had been brought.
Crypto.com chief executive Kris Marszalek framed the deal as an opening move. “We think this is the beginning of a very strategic relationship, and the prediction-market event contracts are just the first product we’re going to be launching together,” he told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the agreement. The two companies have also discussed equity-linked perpetual futures, pending regulatory approval. Crypto.com is working toward an initial public offering, though Marszalek said no decision on timing has been made, and plans acquisitions to fuel growth.
JB Mackenzie, Robinhood’s vice president and general manager of futures and prediction markets, said the arrangement would let the brokerage offer more competitive pricing and a wider range of contracts, and pointed to the start of football season and the approaching midterm elections as significant timing. “It’s something [our customers] want to trade,” he said.
The elections point is not incidental. Reuters reported that Robinhood is also expanding its election-related contracts ahead of the November midterms with a dedicated hub for state and federal races, some of which could later be routed to Crypto.com and OG.com.
The category has become a material part of Robinhood’s business. Event contract revenue climbed more than tenfold year over year to a record $156 million in the second quarter, with the number of contracts traded also rising more than tenfold to a record 13.6 billion. The company reported total net revenues of $1.31 billion for the quarter, up 32%.
Competition has intensified across the sector. Combined trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket reached $50 billion last year and has passed $130 billion in 2026 so far. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who explored acquiring Kalshi before directing a team to build a competing app, is among the entrants, and sportsbook operators Fanduel and Draftkings have taken market-maker roles on prediction venues.
