Robinhood Launches World Cup Prediction Markets Through Rothera
Robinhood is utilizing the 2026 World Cup to carry Rothera deeper into its prediction markets enterprise, increasing the app’s soccer providing simply days after the Robinhood-backed alternate started powering its first occasion contracts.
The firm stated Thursday that it’s launching World Cup markets protecting particular person matches, group and event winners, spreads, totals, participant contracts and combos. Some of these contracts will probably be routed by Rothera, a CFTC-regulated alternate and clearinghouse previously referred to as MIAXdx/LedgerX that’s now managed by a Robinhood and Susquehanna International Group three way partnership.
“The World Cup is a world phenomenon and is the proper occasion to launch Rothera,” JB Mackenzie, Robinhood’s vice chairman and common supervisor of futures and prediction markets, stated within the announcement. “We’re now delivering much more worth for purchasers as we proceed on our mission to make Robinhood the perfect place to commerce prediction markets.”
The World Cup rollout follows Robinhood’s first Rothera-linked markets late final week. Those included choose Major League Baseball contracts, Core PCE Price Index markets and weekly jobless claims markets, matching the primary Rothera contracts self-certified with the CFTC on May 13. Rothera’s soccer contracts were self-certified on May 27.
Rothera rollout doesn’t totally substitute Kalshi World Cup markets
Robinhood’s World Cup rollout doesn’t imply the corporate has moved all of its soccer contracts to Rothera.
The Robinhood app confirmed a devoted World Cup part this week, with markets organized into classes together with video games, event outcomes, awards, group qualifiers, group winners, elimination, development, complete objectives, participant objectives and crew objectives. But the underlying contracts look like break up between Rothera and Kalshi.
Rules hyperlinks on Robinhood markets confirmed some World Cup contracts tied to Rothera phrases, together with the principle World Cup winner market and a few match-level final result, unfold and total-goals markets. Other World Cup-related markets nonetheless linked to Kalshi phrases, together with participant contracts, parlay-style combos and a few tournament-prop markets resembling first-time World Cup winner, group-to-win-the-tournament and award markets.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that some World Cup contracts on Robinhood will proceed to be routed to Kalshi, together with the participant contracts and combos. The firm will make routing selections in the course of the event based mostly on elements like liquidity and backbone readability, Mackenzie instructed Bloomberg.
Kalshi stays a part of Robinhood’s World Cup product
The break up routing mannequin is critical as a result of Robinhood has been certainly one of Kalshi’s most essential distribution companions. Bloomberg reported that Robinhood customers accounted for practically 1 / 4 of Kalshi’s total buying and selling quantity in March.
Kalshi additionally has a big direct World Cup product. Its public World Cup hub confirmed greater than 400 markets as of Friday morning, together with particular person video games, group markets, event futures, awards, props and participant/crew purpose markets.
Robinhood’s providing is more durable to depend from the surface. More than 50 World Cup-related occasion pages had been publicly discoverable on Robinhood’s internet product, although the online model didn’t present the identical devoted World Cup hub that was seen within the app.
Rothera offers Robinhood a path past outdoors exchanges
That makes the launch much less a full substitute of Kalshi than the beginning of a hybrid mannequin. Robinhood has used Kalshi and ForecastEx contracts since launching its prediction markets hub in March 2025. At a current investor convention, CFO Shiv Verma stated Robinhood expects most of its prediction market circulation emigrate to its personal alternate over time, in line with MarketBeat.
In a prolonged X publish Thursday, Rothera framed the World Cup launch as a start line fairly than the complete technique, saying its event-contract infrastructure will ultimately help markets tied to financial knowledge, climate, coverage selections and geopolitical developments.
The publish additionally nodded to contract-listing self-discipline at a time when prediction market operators are drawing extra scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators. Rothera stated it evaluations contracts for “compliance, market integrity, liquidity and susceptibility to manipulation,” including that it’s “not right here to checklist each attainable occasion.”
Lower charges for Rothera-routed contracts
Robinhood can be pitching the Rothera rollout as a lower-cost buying and selling mannequin for purchasers.
The firm stated it launched a brand new prediction-market pricing mannequin on June 1, with fee charges that change based mostly on contract worth and order measurement. Robinhood stated these charges are decrease for contracts priced close to $0.01 or $0.99 and is not going to exceed $0.01 per contract. For contracts routed by Kalshi or ForecastEx, buying and selling prices will be larger as a result of Robinhood’s fee is layered on prime of the alternate’s personal payment.
Customers with Robinhood Gold, the corporate’s paid membership plan, will obtain as much as 50% decrease fee charges than non-Gold prospects. Users who refer 5 mates to prediction markets will have the ability to unlock uncapped $0 commissions on World Cup trades starting June 8, in line with the Robinhood announcement.
World Cup presents main take a look at for prediction markets
The World Cup begins June 11, giving Robinhood and Rothera a fast take a look at of the brand new alternate infrastructure forward of one of many largest world sporting occasions of the yr. The event runs by July 19 and contains 104 matches throughout the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Other prediction market operators are additionally making ready for the event. For instance, Fanatics Markets launched a devoted World Cup hub final week by a partnership with ADI Predictstreet.
DeFi Rate estimated this week that Americans will commerce greater than $2.5 billion on 2026 World Cup prediction markets, together with a projected $1.47 billion on Kalshi alone. The evaluation discovered that Kalshi’s World Cup winner market is pacing forward of its comparable March Madness market and projected it may attain about $253 million in quantity by the top of the event.
DeFi Rate is monitoring World Cup prediction market volume and contract odds all through the event and has launched a free World Cup bracket challenge.
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