![\"Kylian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7WMJRAEF3FEEZDGUVCYBCROAPY.jpg\")
Kylian Mbappe of France celebrates scoring a goal during his team’s quarterfinal match against Morocco in Foxborough in July.Molly Darlington\/Getty<\/p>\nThanks in part to the World Cup and NBA Finals, DraftKings saw its customer base grow rapidly this spring and early summer, even as profits and revenue fell, executives with the Boston-based sports betting company said Friday.<\/p>\n
The big events helped DraftKings add customers at a rate 75 percent faster than the second quarter of 2025, the company said. and 30 percent more than they\u2019d planned. On a call with analysts, CEO Jason Robbins said the company increased its investment in customer acquisition by 10 percent to match the growth, but the rate of incoming customers was still higher than expected.<\/p>\n
Despite all that growth, the sportsbook lost money in the quarter, recording a $68 million loss compared to a $158 million profit a year prior. Revenue also fell from $1.51 billion from $1.44 billion in the same period last year. <\/p>\n
Why? <\/p>\n
For one, gamblers won a larger-than-expected share of bets \u2014 always a risk for a betting operation \u2014 and also DraftKings invested to acquire those new customers. Adjusted for sport outcomes and customer acquisition, revenue increased 10 percent year over year, Robbins said, and the total volume of trades on DraftKings platforms grew by nearly five times from $2.3 billion to $11 billion on an annual basis.<\/p>\n
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Much of that growth was driven by big events \u2014 in particular the NBA Finals in June and the World Cup in June and July. The sportsbook saw six times as much activity around the World Cup as it did during the previous one four years ago, chief financial officer Alan Ellingson said during the earnings call, and growth continued after the tournament ended.<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbappe of France celebrates scoring a goal during his team’s quarterfinal match against Morocco in Foxborough in July.Molly Darlington\/Getty<\/p>\n
To DraftKings, those big events \u2014 especially the World Cup \u2014 represented an opportunity to add new customers. Earlier this year, the company consolidated all of its gambling platforms into what Robbins described as a \u201csuper app.\u201d New upgrades came with it, including full Spanish language functionality ahead of the World Cup. (DraftKings also ran ads on Spanish-language broadcasts of the tournament which for some games rivaled viewership<\/a> of broadcasts in English on Fox.)<\/p>\n It appears to have paid off. The platform saw a 245 percent increase in active Spanish language soccer bettors alone during the tournament, according to an X post<\/a> after the World Cup was through. <\/p>\n That same post also shows that DraftKings\u2019s prediction market platform set a new record for trading volume and number of active customers on the World Cup final. <\/p>\n Even so, the platform, which launched in December, remains behind bigger prediction-market operators, including Kalshi and Polymarket, in volume. However, DraftKings saw minimal impact from other prediction market operators on sportsbook revenue. <\/p>\n In the earnings call, Robbins expressed confidence that customer growth would lead to bigger returns short-term and long-term, with more upgrades to the app in August ahead of the start of the NFL season in September.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is only the beginning,\u201d Robbins said. \u201cWe expect to build on this momentum as we improve our offerings.\u201d<\/p>\n