The outgoing CEO of Flutter, Peter Jackson, has said the prediction markets space is “evolving very quickly” and that any attempt to make a “long-term assessment is really hard”.
Answering questions alongside CFO Rob Coldrake at a ‘fireside chat’ organised by financial institution Oppenheimer on 11 August, Jackson remarked that whether sports event contracts are a financial product “ultimately gets resolved by the Supreme Court”.
Regardless of any potential ruling by the Supreme Court, he reiterated it would be a win-win situation for the owner of FanDuel Predicts and FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino.
“The outcomes are either good or great for us. I think what we would like to see is clarity, [but] whatever happens, we are very well positioned,” said Jackson, who set to be replaced by Dan Taylor at the end of September.
“There are two things we are focused on – this is why it’s incremental [revenue] for us. One is acquiring those customers in those [US] states in advance of sports betting regulating in the market.
“The second thing is about making money from using market making.”
The New York-listed operator’s Q2 results revealed $6m (£4.4m) was generated from market making in the quarter, while management are confident the “rapidly scaling” capability will deliver $50m in revenue over the course of 2026.
Flutter also announced that all sports and novelty event contracts on FanDuel Predicts will switch from CME Group to Crypto.com, though financial contracts will continue to trade with CME Group.
When asked by Oppenheimer’s Jed Kelly if there was a market share Flutter was targeting when it comes to market making, Jackson responded: “Large. More than we have now – we’d like it to be larger.”
While no specific target share was divulged, the contribution from market making this year was included in Flutter’s revised full-year guidance of $17.9bn in revenue and EBITDA of almost $2.7bn.
Jackson went on to talk up Flutter’s market making, insisting: “I think we can make very good returns on it. We have the balance sheet to cope with some big volumes on it.
“I think we will have one of the best market-making capabilities, particularly in combos, and we will look to try to make a lot of money out of it.”
He also revealed that Flutter sees “plenty of people trying to scrape our prices to support their market-making activity”, adding: “We got some plans of how we may deal with that.”
At the end of June, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission set new rules to prevent “conflicts of interest” between exchanges and market markers, while the agency has also reminded platforms not to display event contracts in American odds.
Coldrake said Flutter has an advantage when pricing “complex parlay-style bets with the correlated outcomes”.
He continued: “We’ve demonstrated our expertise in this area before. This is why we’ve got a pricing advantage on the core sportsbook, and that carries over here.
“That gives us confidence we can take meaningful [market] share, and we’re scaling that business really rapidly.”
While speaking at the Oppenheimer event, Flutter’s boss also highlighted what he described as “regulatory arbitrage” in the US.
“If I live in California, I can access prediction markets [but] I can’t access online sports betting. I cannot believe that, in time, the regulatory arbitrage will be allowed to carry on to the same extent.
“We will see what happens. Obviously, the Supreme Court will make their ruling. I think wherever you see regulated online sports betting and prediction markets side by side on a level playing field, online sports betting wins because of the generosity and superior product offering.”
On that point, Jackson said its Betfair Exchange, which it operates in markets like the UK, Italy and Brazil, remains a “niche product” that “never got much traction”, mainly due to the fact it is difficult to offer bonuses and free bets to customers.
“If Rob [Coldrake] places a £100 bet on his soccer team to win and the market maker wins the £100 off him, the market maker’s not going fund Rob a free bet because the market marker can’t be confident they’ll get the next bet.
“It’s all blind matched […] generosity is very, very difficult to apply in the platform.”
Yesterday, US prediction markets leader Kalshi suffered another legal blow after a judge in Connecticut denied the prediction markets’motion for a preliminary injunction by ruling its sports-related event contracts are sports wagers.
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During an Oppenheimer event, Peter Jackson also hails the firm’s in-house market-making capabilities, particularly with combos, and reveals rivals have been scraping its prices
The post Taking a long-term view on prediction markets is “very hard”, admits Flutter’s CEO first appeared on EGR Intel.