Robinhood and Kalshi Forge A New Era of Super Bowl Betting

ESI Editorial Team

Super Bowl week kicked off with a bang on Monday, with trading platform Robinhood unveiling its visionary partnership with Kalshi to offer its customers gameday event-based contracts.

Set to reinvent not just NFL betting but sports betting in general, the move is a clear statement of intent to disrupt the market by Robinhood ahead of Super Bowl LIX this Sunday. The result of which instantly opened the door to prediction market trading to its nearly 25 million account holders in all 50 states.

Fusing finance with sporting events-based trading, Kalshi’s innovative platform now provides Robinhood a forum to offering Super Bowl events contracts – even in hold-out states where sports betting is still restricted.

This all comes in the wake of Kalshi’s submission to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approval last month in a bid to introduce sports-orientated prediction contracts.

Listed on the firm’s platform as a ‘Pro Football Championship event contract,’ it operates in very much the same way as the sportsbook’s moneyline wagers, with account holders able to place bets on whether the Kansas City Chiefs or Philadelphia Eagles will win the Super Bowl.

However, unlike traditional online sportsbooks, event-based contracts fall under existing financial market regulations, which Robinhood and Kalshi argue “leverage the power and rigor of the financial market structure to facilitate greater liquidity, transparency, and price discovery.”

A Nationwide Game-Changer for Sports Bettors

In a rather ingenious move, Robinhood’s alliance with Kalshi has also created a pathway to tap into the lucrative California and Texas markets, offering a viable alternative to sports bettors where legal sportsbooks remain prohibited.

According to Robinhood’s event contract framework, trading will be available on the platform from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. ET every day in the lead-up to Super Bowl Sunday. It comes a year after a record-breaking Super Bowl last year, with over $300 million bet legally across the US.

This move will allow users to modify their positions throughout the week to react to any breaking news, player injuries, as well as shifts in market betting trends.

Monday’s announcement marks an impressive ascent into the predictions market arena for Kalshi after establishing itself as a strategic platform for political event contracts last year during the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The revelation will also likely ruffle a number of feathers, placing the firm in direct competition with Crypto.com, which recently filed similar paperwork with the CFTC last month. Despite this, Kalshi hopes its strategic moves behind the scenes will strengthen its competitive edge, having recently appointed Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic advisor.

If it succeeds, all signs point to events-based contracts being poised to become major disruptors to the broader sports betting industry – a sector that tallied over $65.8 billion in commercial gaming revenue in the first eleven months of 2024, according to the American Gaming Association (AGA).

The appeal of the financial-esq model will certainly attract traders nationwide – particularly from states with strict gambling laws – but in offering reduced margins in comparison to standard sportsbook commissions, bettors too could be enticed to join in with the lure of better-priced odds.

So, as Sunday’s NFL season-ending spectacle nears, Robinhood and Kalshi’s remarkable partnership could soon be front runners that facilitate a merger of financial stock traders and sports bettors operating on the same platform.