Bank of America warning: Robinhood (HOOD.US) teamed up with market maker giant Susquehanna to vertically integrate to predict that the traditional gaming industry will be hit by downsizing

The Zhitong Finance App learned that on December 16, local time, Robinhood (HOOD.US) officially hosted a themed event called “YES/NO”. The event was not only a deep upgrade to its prediction market business, but was also viewed by the market as an “open war” against traditional gaming giants (such as DraftKings and FanDuel) and existing prediction platform Kalshi. Bank of America and other institutions have warned that this “technical” tech giant's downsizing attack on “traditional” gaming companies may force the entire industry to fundamentally reverse customer acquisition costs and rate standards.

Bank of America believes that since Robinhood recently announced the establishment of a vertically integrated forecasting market joint venture with Susquehanna Investment Group, the company may take the opportunity to highlight the decline in dependence on Kalshi.

“According to our communication, online sports betting investors seem to view any negative side of Kalshi as an advantage for online sports betting operators, but we think that increased investment by big tech companies like Robinhood is a competitive threat to DraftKings (DKNG.US) and FanDuel.” The bank's analyst Julie Hoover warned.

Another major concern is the competitiveness of Robinhood, Kalshi, and PolyMarket on event contract fees — they compete for users' attention with sports betting apps such as Fanduel, DraftKings, and BetMGM, which have highly recognizable bonus bets, profit boosts, and other promotions.

According to information, Robinhood announced in November 2025 that it plans to join forces with Susquehanna to acquire 90% controlling interest in derivatives exchange MiaXDX. This strategic move aims to create a new federally regulated derivatives and prediction market trading platform. The deal is expected to close in early 2026.

The core point of the deal is that after announcing the acquisition of an exchange license and teaming up with market maker giant Susquehanna, Robinhood will showcase its fully autonomous and vertically integrated trading ecosystem — by divesting third-party platform fees and using “zero fees” and deep liquidity advantages to completely push event contracts (from sports to macroeconomics) to mainstream tens of millions of retail investors.

Notably, MiaXDX has received CFTC approval to list and liquidate fully collateralized futures, futures options, and swap products. The acquisition will provide more complete infrastructure capabilities for Robinhood's future derivatives and predictive markets business.

The new exchange will be managed by a joint venture between the two parties, with Robinhood as the controlling party and Susquehanna as the liquidity provider from the first day of the transaction. The core purpose is to expand Robinhood's rapidly growing “prediction contract” business to cover a wide range of events from sporting events to elections.

Unlike traditional fixed odds betting, the forecast market is based on “peer-to-peer” pricing between users. Prices reflect changes in market participants' collective expectations in real time, thus providing more event betting options that traditional bookmakers cannot cover.

In March of this year, Robinhood announced a partnership with KalShieX, which is regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to launch a “Predictive Market Center” within its app. When this new feature was launched, it quickly became one of Robinhood's fastest-growing revenue projects.

The company stated in its third-quarter earnings report that it predicts that the market business “will grow extremely fast.” Since its launch a year ago, the number of customer trading contracts in this sector has reached 9 billion, with a cumulative total of more than 1 million users participating. Coupled with the Luxembourg cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp, which was acquired in June of this year, the annualized revenue of Robinhood-related forecasting market business exceeded 100 million US dollars in less than a year.