Robinhood started routing a selection of football event contracts to Crypto.com‘s CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse on Tuesday, the brokerage said, opening a fourth destination for the event contracts its customers trade. The contracts flow to OG.com, a separate trader-focused app that Crypto.com intends to spin off as an independent trading platform.
Robinhood Markets will hold equity stakes in both Crypto.com and OG.com once that spin-off completes, with the equity priced in line with Citadel Securities’ recent investment into Crypto.com Group at a $20 billion valuation. Crypto.com‘s clearing entity operates as Crypto.com Derivatives North America inside the main app. The Wall Street Journal first reported the talks in July.
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For Robinhood shareholders, the deal is a bet on the business that has become the company’s growth engine. Prediction markets traded 13.6 billion contracts in the second quarter, including 5 billion during the World Cup, producing roughly $156 million in revenue and a 50% jump from the prior quarter. That was the first period in which the unit out-earned Robinhood’s crypto business. Customers have traded more than 45 billion contracts since launch about two years ago, with over 30 billion of those coming this year through August.
Spreading order flow across venues also reduces Robinhood’s dependence on any single exchange. Contracts will still route to Kalshi, ForecastEX, and Rothera, the CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse run through Robinhood’s joint venture with Susquehanna International Group, which began taking flow in June. College and pro football contracts will be split among OG.com, Kalshi, and Rothera depending on what each exchange lists.
Robinhood is also building out a midterms hub with interactive heat maps and near real-time vote counts once polls close, a separate effort from the Crypto.com deal. Those election contracts currently route to Kalshi and Rothera, with possible expansion to Crypto.com and OG.com in coming weeks. The retail brokerage field around event contracts keeps widening: Charles Schwab announced plans for binary S&P 500 contracts in June.
Related Listen: CME vs. Kalshi. Is Washington Picking a Winner in Prediction Markets?
