DraftKings Brings Prediction Markets In-House With Railbird-Powered DKeX Exchange

DraftKings has taken its prediction markets in-house. On June 26 the operator launched DKeX, a proprietary prediction markets exchange that runs on the CFTC license it picked up by acquiring Railbird Technologies, and it is folding the platform directly into its unified DraftKings: Sports & Casino app. The move turns DraftKings from a reseller of other firms' event contracts into an exchange that makes its own markets, sets its own pricing, and keeps a larger share of the trading economics.

Until now DraftKings Predictions has surfaced contracts sourced from outside venues, including CME Group and Crypto.com. The Railbird deal, which closed last fall, gave DraftKings a registered designated contract market (DCM) licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Railbird Exchange earned that DCM status in July 2025, and DraftKings completed the acquisition on October 21, 2025. A DCM can list and clear its own futures, options, and event contracts, so DKeX lets DraftKings own the full stack rather than route volume and fees through CME and Crypto.com.

"DKeX provides a vertically integrated foundation for DraftKings Predictions, strengthening our prediction markets content and capabilities, giving us greater control over the technology that powers those offerings, and enabling us to move faster as we continue enhancing our unified app," CEO Jason Robins said in the announcement. Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto, the company's senior vice president and general manager of prediction markets, called the launch "a major step forward in delivering a best-in-class customer experience in sports nationwide" and pointed to the speed of recent feature rollouts "from expanding our event contract offerings to introducing key features like combos, which customers have quickly embraced."

From 38 states to 48, and the volume behind it

DraftKings launched Predictions in December 2025 across 38 states and has since pushed it to 48, with only Maine and New Hampshire left out. Sports event contracts are live in 18 states. The product has steadily grown to look more like a sportsbook, adding player props, parlay-style combination contracts, MLB player and futures markets, NRFI baseball contracts, more NBA and NHL markets, international sports, and a "Live" tab for in-event trading.

The volume is starting to register. DraftKings said Predictions grew 24% month over month in annualized consumer volume in May and 34% in annualized total volume traded. For the week ending June 21 the company reported roughly $3.4 billion in annualized consumer trading volume and about $11.3 billion in annualized total volume. More than 30% of customers have used combination contracts since they launched in mid-May.

Analysts at Citizens framed the in-house exchange as the part that actually matters for earnings. Writing on June 19, Jordan Bender and Isabelle Slavin said the company currently "has no meaningful market-making activity and little volume flowing through its exchange," which makes the reported figures "relatively insignificant from an earnings perspective." By the NFL season, they expect DraftKings to begin routing significant volume through its own exchange and away from CME and Crypto.com while making markets on both DKeX and third-party platforms. They called market-making "the most attractive layer" of the event-contracts business, with economics "superior relative to nearly every other area within consumer discretionary."

Why now, and what it means for the field

DraftKings is doing this from a position of scale. It holds roughly 34% to 36% of US sportsbook gross gaming revenue, second to FanDuel, and the two together control close to 78% of the market. The company posted Q1 2026 revenue of about $1.65 billion, up 17%, with sportsbook revenue up 24% to $1.1 billion, and guided to $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion for the full year. Robins has said the prediction-markets vertical is "still in its first inning."

The timing tracks the rest of the field moving at once. Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated exchange, is reportedly raising at a roughly $40 billion valuation, nearly double the $22 billion it set in May. FanDuel went live with its own event-contract play through a Crypto.com tie-up, an expansion now reaching toward all 50 states. Even Meta has signaled a prediction-markets product through its Arena initiative. For DraftKings, event contracts offer a federally regulated path to sports trading in states where its sportsbook cannot operate, which is the entire strategic point of putting Predictions in 48 states while the sportsbook sits in far fewer.

That path runs through an unsettled legal fight. Several state regulators argue prediction-market sports contracts are unlicensed sports betting, and enforcement has already landed elsewhere in the category, including a geofencing-violations finding against Kalshi in Nevada. DraftKings is betting the CFTC framework holds. There is precedent for the company picking a federal-friendly lane over the established betting trade group: DraftKings and FanDuel both left the American Gaming Association in 2024, a split tied in part to strategy disagreements, and DraftKings has spent the time since assembling its own regulatory footing rather than waiting for industry consensus. With NFL season as the analysts' stated inflection point, the question is how much of that $11.3 billion in annualized volume DraftKings can pull onto a platform where it keeps the spread.