Robinhood is stepping up the capabilities of its fastest growing product — prediction markets — by giving users the ability to place what are essential parlay bets on multiple NFL games, putting it into direct competition with traditional sports books.
Starting Tuesday, users are able to trade preset combinations of the outcome, totals and spreads of individual NFL games, and starting in early 2026, users will have the ability to create custom combos of up to 10 outcomes across NFL games. Those will have “a structural look or feel as a parlay,” JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood, told CNBC.
Even more, the company is allowing users to wager on the performances of individual NFL players in real time. For example, they can place prop bets on a certain player scoring a touchdown at any point during a game as well as the passing, receiving and rushing yards for a player.
“This was a great opportunity for us to really be able to become the leader in the space, and that’s what we’re working to do,” Mackenzie said. “The enhancements here are another example of it, where we’re trying to build new customer experiences that make it easier and, in some cases, provide them more advanced order types and trading capabilities to meet the needs that they’re asking us for.”
The new features were unveiled at the company’s “Robinhood Presents: YES/NO” keynote event at the Summit Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, Calif., right outside San Francisco.
The parlay capability may even extend beyond the NFL in the future, according to Robinhood. The broker is also looking at opportunities to allow combos across different event categories, including those outside of sports like economic data.
Parlaying non-sports events
“Over time, the question is going to be, ‘Is there interest to pair assets from different classes together?'” Mackenzie said, noting “something that’s associated with climate and an election” as an example. “All sporting events are definitely on the radar. I also think that domestic and international economic data is going to be on there as well, as well as domestic and international policy.”
Robinhood’s involvement with prediction markets began just before the 2024 presidential election, where it gave users the ability to trade a contract of former Vice President Kamala Harris or President Donald Trump.
In a little more than a year since it partnered with ForecastEx for election trading, the company has only expanded its presence in the prediction markets ecosystem. It has partnered with prediction market operator Kalshi this year. More recently, it announced a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group in November.
Robinhood has been seeing the fruits of its labor. Prediction markets as a business has already brought in $100 million in annualized revenue with 11 billion contracts traded by more than 1 million customers. Based on October figures, it’s on pace to become a $300 million business.
November was the business’s biggest month to date at more than 3 billion contracts traded, signifying an approximately 20% increase from October. That month saw 2.5 billion contracts traded, which is more than the entirety of the year’s third-quarter performance at 2.3 billion contracts.
“I actually think we’re at the beginning of where this is really going to go,” Mackenzie said. “I think that we’re going to continue to see the expansion of new not only events but also asset classes, where people can continue to trade in.”
Gen-Z’s Schwab
Earlier this year, Piper Sandler said that Robinhood’s prediction markets business posed a “significant” growth opportunity for the company, and they’re not the only ones that are optimistic.
Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev said the strong desire among Robinhood users to interact with prediction markets presents “lots of upside.” In a recent survey, he found that users of Robinhood and Coinbase – another platform – are about nine times more likely than non-users to partake in prediction markets.
“They’re going after a user base that’s already predisposed to engaging with prediction markets,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “Over time, they’re going to become sort of a hub for prediction markets.”
Dolev said Robinhood’s move into prediction markets is a main reason the stock has soared a monstrous 220% in 2025.
HOOD, year-to-date
However, the analyst underscored that prediction markets isn’t the only thing to watch for the company. With its involvement in other areas like retirement, he forecasts that Robinhood will eventually become “the new Schwab for Gen Z.”
To put that into perspective, Robinhood’s assets under custody for the full 2024 year stood at $193 billion. Charles Schwab’s total client assets were at $10.10 trillion in the same period.
“Prediction marks is one aspect,” he continued. “They’re circling around every aspect of someone’s financial life.”
KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Alex Markgraff concurs. He said that a number of the company’s other endeavors, including its advisory business and its highly in-demand gold card, are in the “early stages of scaling.”
“In the short term, [prediction markets is] certainly an area where you might have sort of an outsized growth contribution just based on the apparent appetite for event contracts across the landscape of consumer retail trading,” he said to CNBC. “Nonetheless, [there are] multiple sources of growth, in our opinion.”
