Robinhood’s Game-Changer: NFL Combo Trades & Real-Time Player Contracts That Work Like Parlays
Robinhood just blurred the lines between sports betting and stock trading—and Wall Street's traditionalists are watching from the sidelines.
Parlay-Style Investing Hits Main Street
The platform launched preset NFL combo trades, letting users bundle multiple player performances into single wagers—sorry, investments. Want to bet on a quarterback's passing yards and a receiver's touchdowns in one click? Now you can. It's fantasy football meets your brokerage account, with real-time player contracts updating faster than a halftime score.
Gamification's Endgame
This isn't just another feature drop. It's a full-scale assault on how younger investors engage with markets. By wrapping volatility in team jerseys and highlight reels, Robinhood bypasses the boring fundamentals that kept previous generations out—or asleep. The interface feels familiar to anyone who's placed a sports bet, which is precisely the point.
The Cynical Take
Of course, turning player stats into tradable assets creates a beautiful irony: now fans can lose money on their favorite team's performance twice—once in the standings, and once in their portfolio. Just what the financial ecosystem needed.
Where This Leads
Watch for other brokerages to scramble toward similar gamified products. When trading platforms start looking more like sportsbooks, the real question becomes: who's actually keeping score?
Expanding combos across sports and non-sports events
The new tools were revealed at the “Robinhood Presents: YES/NO” event at Summit Skywalker Ranch NEAR San Francisco. The preset combos are only for NFL right now, but the company said it wants to extend these trades beyond football.
They are studying ways to mix outcomes from totally different event groups. That includes anything from sports to economic reports. Mackenzie said people may want to pair “something that’s associated with climate and an election,” and he said the firm is also looking at domestic and international data, plus policy events, which makes the future lineup wide open.
Robinhood’s push into prediction markets actually started right before the 2024 election. Users could trade contracts tied to Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. It was a test run, and it turned into a major part of the platform.
After linking with ForecastEx for election trading, the company kept expanding into the space. It partnered with Kalshi earlier this year and then went into a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group in November. So they’ve been planting flags everywhere.
The business has grown fast. The company said prediction markets already make about $100 million in annualized revenue. Users have traded 11 billion contracts, and more than 1 million people have taken part.
Based on October numbers, the business is on track to hit $300 million. November alone was their biggest month ever with more than 3 billion contracts traded. That was a jump of roughly 20% from October’s 2.5 billion.
That single month beat the entire third quarter, which saw 2.3 billion. Mackenzie said, “I actually think we’re at the beginning of where this is really going to go,” and he expects expansion into more events and more asset classes.
Tracking revenue drivers and market interest
Analysts see a lot of profit potential here, even though nobody is sugarcoating the competition. Piper Sandler said the product is a major growth shot for Robinhood. Mizuho’s Dan Dolev said users on platforms like Robinhood and Coinbase are about nine times more likely to use prediction markets than non-users.
He said the company is targeting a base that is already interested in these kinds of trades. He also said, “Over time, they’re going to become sort of a hub for prediction markets.” Dolev pointed to prediction markets as one reason the stock has run up 220% in 2025.
But prediction markets are not the only part of the story. Robinhood is building out retirement, advisory, its Gold card and other products. Dolev said this mix is why he thinks the company could become “the new Schwab for Gen Z.” To get a sense of scale, Robinhood’s assets under custody for 2024 were at $193 billion.
Schwab reported $10.10 trillion in client assets in the same period. Dolev said, “Prediction markets is one aspect,” and he argued the company is circling around more parts of a customer’s financial life.
KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Alex Markgraff also pointed to several areas of growth. He said the advisory business and the gold card are still early. He said prediction markets will likely give a large boost in the near term because people want event contracts.
In his view, Robinhood has “multiple sources of growth,” and prediction markets are only one piece of the company’s expanding stack.
Join a premium crypto trading community free for 30 days - normally $100/mo.
