Vlad Tenev Says Crypto Event Contracts Are Taking a Larger Share of Robinhood Prediction Markets

Meta description: Vlad Tenev said crypto event contracts are taking an outsized Robinhood share as Q2 event revenue rose to $156 million.

Tags: Robinhood, Vlad Tenev, Kalshi, Rothera, CFTC, NFL prediction markets

Market platform: none-if-cross-platform

Category: Industry

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told CNBC’s Mad Money that crypto event contracts are taking a disproportionate share of Robinhood’s prediction markets business and that sports could become a minority category within a few years. Robinhood has not disclosed a crypto-versus-sports volume split, but its event-contract business generated $156 million of Q2 2026 transaction revenue, according to the company’s July 29 earnings release filed with the SEC.

The distinction matters because sports contracts are drawing the sharpest legal challenges from state and local regulators, while Robinhood is trying to frame prediction markets as a broader retail trading category. Tenev’s comments also came after a quarter in which event contracts produced more Robinhood transaction revenue than equities or crypto trading, though options remained the company’s largest transaction-based revenue line.

What did Vlad Tenev say about crypto and sports contracts?

Tenev pushed back on CNBC against the idea that event contracts are simply sports betting with a market wrapper. In the interview with Jim Cramer, he said Robinhood was already seeing “other categories like crypto taking a disproportionate share” and added that he expects sports to be in the minority within a few years.

That is a forward-looking claim from the chief executive of a company with a direct commercial interest in prediction markets. Robinhood’s public filings do not break out event-contract revenue or volume by subject matter, so the company’s disclosed numbers show the growth of the category as a whole, not whether crypto contracts have overtaken sports inside Robinhood’s own hub.

Robinhood’s public crypto prediction-market pages show contracts tied to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP and other digital-asset outcomes, including price levels, yearly ranges and relative performance questions. Robinhood’s support materials describe event contracts as binary Yes-or-No instruments priced between 1 cent and 99 cents, with standard contracts settling at either $1 or $0.

How large is Robinhood’s event-contract business now?

Robinhood reported $156 million in event-contract revenue for Q2 2026, up more than 10 times from the year-earlier period, in its July 29 shareholder release. Total transaction-based revenue was $776 million, led by $342 million from options, followed by event contracts, $129 million from equities and $100 million from cryptocurrencies.

The same Robinhood release said event contracts traded increased more than 10 times year over year to a quarterly record of 13.6 billion. The company also said Rothera, its CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse joint venture with Susquehanna International Group, had handled more than 3.5 billion contracts since its June launch.

Those figures make event contracts one of Robinhood’s fastest-growing disclosed transaction categories. They do not, however, separate sports, crypto, politics or other contract types. That leaves Tenev’s CNBC comments as management commentary about mix, not a substitute for a published segment breakdown.

What infrastructure is Robinhood building around prediction markets?

Robinhood is moving beyond simple distribution of third-party contracts. In November 2025, the company announced a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to operate a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse. Robinhood said the venture would acquire MIAXdx, formerly LedgerX, and the acquisition closed on January 20, 2026, according to MIH’s SEC filing.

Robinhood’s own support disclosures say event contracts are offered by Robinhood Derivatives LLC, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and National Futures Association member, through KalshiEX LLC, ForecastEx LLC or Rothera Exchange and Clearing LLC. That multi-venue setup gives Robinhood more routing options than it had when it launched prediction markets through Kalshi.

The Rothera buildout is central to the company’s strategy. It gives Robinhood a route to participate in exchange and clearing economics, not just customer-facing brokerage activity. It also places the company more directly inside the regulatory perimeter for derivatives, where federal oversight by the CFTC is at the center of the industry’s dispute with state gambling regulators.

Where does sports volume stand after NFL Week 1?

Sports remains the industry’s biggest public-volume story in September. Needham reported that sports and parlay prediction-market volume reached $14.6 billion during Week 1 of the 2026 NFL season, based on data normalized across a Tuesday-to-Monday NFL week and tracked across eight exchanges, according to Investing.com’s account of the research.

Needham said that Week 1 sports and parlay volume matched the total from the first 14 weeks of the prior NFL season. It also estimated consumer-equivalent handle at $2.1 billion and said Kalshi held 76% of total sports and parlay volume, with Polymarket and DKeX next by volume. Needham cautioned that exchange-volume comparisons can overstate Kalshi and Polymarket because other operators route order flow through those venues, while DraftKings activity may be split across multiple exchanges.

Covers reported a narrower Sunday slice of NFL trading. It said Kalshi accounted for 76% of Sunday trading volume on NFL games and that Kalshi saw $388.1 million traded on NFL games, excluding combos, during the first Sunday of the 2026 season, up 40% year over year.

Those figures show why the sports category remains too large for prediction-market companies to ignore, even if Robinhood is emphasizing crypto growth. They also show why comparisons need to be precise: full-week sports-and-parlay exchange volume, Sunday NFL volume and consumer-equivalent handle are different measures.

Why are sports contracts carrying more legal risk?

State and local actions have focused on sports-related event contracts because regulators say they function like unlicensed sports betting. The New York Attorney General’s office announced on July 31, 2026, that New York sued KalshiEX LLC, alleging that Kalshi was operating an illegal gambling business through its prediction-market platform. The office said Kalshi began offering sports “trading” in 2025 and accused the company of making sports betting available without state authorization.

Baltimore filed separate lawsuits in August against Kalshi and Polymarket over sports-event contracts. The city’s Kalshi case also named distribution partners including Robinhood, Coinbase and Webull, according to The Block’s report on the Baltimore City Circuit Court filings. Baltimore alleged the platforms violated the city’s Consumer Protection Ordinance by offering sports betting without state licenses.

Robinhood has also faced state pressure directly. In its Q2 2026 SEC filing, the company said a Nevada federal court denied Robinhood Derivatives’ motion for a preliminary injunction and that Robinhood agreed to stop offering new sports-related event contracts in Nevada as of December 1, 2025, while related appeal proceedings continued.

The legal issue is not whether prediction markets can exist at all. It is whether federally regulated event contracts can be offered in categories that states regulate as gambling, especially sports. That question is now moving through multiple courts, with exchanges, state attorneys general, gaming regulators, cities and distribution platforms all trying to define the boundary.

What is the next milestone for Robinhood?

The next clean data point is the close of Robinhood’s third quarter on September 30, 2026, followed by the company’s Q3 earnings report. That filing should show whether event-contract revenue kept growing through the start of football season, although it may still not disclose how much came from crypto, sports or other categories.

For investors and competitors, the key number is whether event contracts remain ahead of equities and cryptocurrencies as a transaction-revenue line. For regulators, the more important question is whether Robinhood keeps expanding its non-sports contracts while sports litigation continues in New York, Nevada, Maryland and other jurisdictions.

Tenev’s CNBC comments set the company’s preferred framing: prediction markets as a broad trading product in which crypto can become a major driver. Robinhood’s next earnings release will test the financial side of that argument, starting with the quarter that ends September 30.