Bank of America warns: Robinhood teams up with market maker giant Susquehanna to vertically integrate and disrupt the traditional gambling industry.

On December 16th local time, Robinhood (HOOD.US) officially hosted a themed event called "YES/NO". This event is not only a deep upgrade of its prediction market business, but is also seen by the market as a "declaration of war" against traditional gambling giants (such as DraftKings and FanDuel) and existing prediction platform Kalshi. Institutions like Bank of America warn that this "tech-savvy" tech giant's blow to the "traditional" gambling companies may force a fundamental reversal in the cost of acquiring customers and rate standards for the entire industry. Bank of America Corp believes that, due to Robinhood recently announcing a joint venture with Susquehanna Investment Group to establish a vertically integrated prediction market, the company may take advantage of this opportunity to highlight the decrease in dependence on Kalshi. "According to our discussions, online sports betting investors seem to view any negatives of Kalshi as a positive for online sports betting operators, but we believe that large tech companies like Robinhood increasing their investment pose a competitive threat to DraftKings (DKNG.US) and FanDuel," warns analyst Julie Hoover. Another major focus is the competition between Robinhood, Kalshi, and Polymarket in event contract transaction fees - they are competing with sports betting apps like FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM to grab user attention, the latter having high recognition for bonus bets, profit increases, and other promotions. It is understood that in November 2025, Robinhood announced a strong partnership with Susquehanna, with plans to acquire 90% stake in the derivatives trading platform MIAXdx. This strategic move aims to create a new federally regulated derivatives and prediction market trading platform. The transaction is expected to be completed in early 2026. The core point of this deal is that after announcing the acquisition of the exchange license and partnering with market maker giant Susquehanna, Robinhood will showcase its fully autonomous, vertically integrated trading ecosystem - by eliminating third-party platform fees, leveraging "zero commission" and deep liquidity advantages, it will thoroughly mainstream event contracts (from sports competitions to macroeconomics) for millions of retail investors. It is worth noting that MIAXdx has received CFTC approval to list and clear fully collateralized futures, futures options, and swaps products. This acquisition will provide Robinhood with a more comprehensive infrastructure capability for its future derivatives and prediction market business. The new exchange will be managed by a joint venture established by both parties, with Robinhood as the controlling party and Susquehanna serving as the liquidity provider from the first day of trading. The core purpose is to expand Robinhood's rapidly growing "prediction contract" business map, covering a wide range of events from sports competitions to elections. Unlike traditional fixed odds betting, prediction markets are based on "peer-to-peer" pricing between users, with prices reflecting the collective expectations of market participants in real-time, thus providing more event betting options that traditional gambling companies cannot cover. In March of this year, Robinhood announced a partnership with KalshiEX, regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to launch the "Prediction Market Center" within its app. This new feature quickly became one of Robinhood's fastest growing revenue streams. In the company's third quarter earnings report, it pointed out that the prediction market business is "growing extremely fast". Since its launch a year ago, the customer trade contract volume in this segment has reached 9 billion, with over 1 million users participating. With the acquisition of the Luxembourg cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp in June of this year, Robinhood's related prediction market business had annualized revenue exceeding $100 million in less than a year.