Up to $50 million, gone in three weeks. That was the 2026 World Cup group stage for DraftKings — and it is the number that should worry the sportsbook far less than the headlines suggest. Bank of America analysts estimate DraftKings’ World Cup losses reached as high as $50 million once bettors backing the United States, England and a parade of goal-scoring superstars started cashing tickets. Yet set against the roughly $1.1 billion the operator was projected to take in wagers over the tournament, the loss looks less like a wound and more like the cost of doing business at the biggest betting event in history.
KEY FACTS AT A GLANCE
- The figure is an estimate: the up-to-$50M loss comes from Bank of America analysts, first reported by the Financial Times — DraftKings declined to comment.
- Favorites, not upsets, did the damage: the U.S., England and heavily backed stars kept winning, and correlated parlays cashed together.
- The USMNT was the single biggest liability for most U.S. books despite only about 3% of global bettors backing it, according to the Financial Times.
- Scale check: the estimated loss equals roughly 4.5% of DraftKings’ projected ~$1.1 billion World Cup handle — money wagered, not profit.
- Not a panic: executives treat the group stage as a customer-acquisition cost with the knockout rounds still to come.
What actually happened to DraftKings
The number that set off the alarms did not come from DraftKings. It came from Bank of America, whose analysts estimated the sportsbook was left out of pocket by as much as $50 million on World Cup group-stage matches — a figure first reported by the Financial Times. DraftKings itself declined to comment on the estimate, and it has disclosed no group-stage loss of its own. In other words, the headline everyone reacted to is an outside analyst’s read on the book, not an audited line in an earnings report.
That distinction matters, because the same analysts framed the World Cup less as a profit engine than as a land grab for customers. Sportsbooks and prediction markets alike poured hundreds of millions into acquisition around the tournament, betting that the bodies they onboard in July will still be wagering in November. A short-term payout to winning bettors is, in that math, a marketing line item — not a crisis. The chart below sets the estimated loss against the money the book was expected to run through its doors.
Why the books bled: favorites and correlated parlays
Sportsbooks do not fear upsets. Upsets are how the house wins, because the public piles onto favorites and long-shot results quietly void millions of tickets. What hurts a book is the opposite: the chalk coming in, over and over, on the same slate. That is exactly what the group stage delivered. Popular sides kept winning, and on June 23 the tournament’s biggest names — Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé among them — all found the net on the same day, lighting up every accumulator that paired a favorite to win with a star to score.
Those combination bets are where the damage compounds. A parlay multiplies the odds of each leg together, so a modest stake can balloon into an outsized payout — and because the legs are correlated (a dominant favorite is also the team whose striker is likeliest to score), they tend to win or lose as a block. When the block wins, the book pays every ticket at once with nothing on the other side to offset it. Here is how a single three-leg World Cup parlay detonates.
Related tools: Parlay Calculator · No-Vig Calculator
It was never just DraftKings
Read the estimate in isolation and DraftKings looks singled out. It was not. Across the industry, the same patriotic and star-driven money created the same exposure — DraftKings was simply the biggest U.S. book, and therefore the biggest headline. Caesars was blunt about where its pain sat.
“The USA is by far our worst result in the book. If they were to lift the trophy, I’d fully expect it to be the biggest loss we’ve ever seen on a soccer tournament.”
— Mark Bickerdike, head of soccer trading, Caesars Sports
BetMGM told a similar story from the other side of the ledger, saying its favorites Spain and France were in the red while results on England, Brazil and Argentina had gone the book’s way. Overseas, the pattern held: the Financial Times reported that Flutter — the parent of FanDuel and Paddy Power — paid out close to $5.5 million to U.K. bettors after England beat Croatia in its opener, before a goalless draw with Ghana more than balanced the books. Every operator was riding the same wave; only the size of the surfboard differed.
The favorite money piled in
The mechanism behind the losses is easiest to see in the odds. As the United States advanced, the price on it to win the whole tournament kept getting shorter — and every time it did, the pile of money already sitting on the USA became a larger liability. At Caesars, the Americans’ title odds tumbled from +5000 at kickoff to +2500 by the round of 16. England, meanwhile, drew roughly 20% of all outright bets worldwide, the single most-backed team, according to the Financial Times, while only about 3% of global bettors sided with the USMNT — yet in the U.S. market that small, concentrated slice was enough to make the American team most books’ single biggest exposure.
This is the flip side of futures betting: outright markets take money months in advance at long prices, so when a heavily backed team goes on a run, the book’s exposure grows with every result rather than resetting match to match.
Why $50 million isn’t a crisis
A $50 million estimate is a real number, but three things keep it from being an emergency. First, it is a group-stage figure — a snapshot from the opening act of a tournament whose knockout rounds, where the book’s outright exposure finally resolves, were still to come. Handle is not profit, and one hot stretch can erase the thin margin a book expects to hold; but the World Cup’s economics are back-loaded, and operators price in exactly this kind of variance.
Second, the day-to-day business never stopped printing. New York State Gaming Commission figures for a single late-June week showed DraftKings taking in more than $180 million in wagers in that one state alone and keeping over $20 million of it — a reminder that a bad run on one market sits on top of a machine that grinds out revenue everywhere else. Third, and most telling, the people running these companies are not framing the tournament as a loss at all. DraftKings chief executive Jason Robins has cast the World Cup as a focal point for acquiring customers, and Flutter’s Peter Jackson called it the biggest betting opportunity the industry had ever seen. For context on how much bigger the strategic bets are, DraftKings has separately guided to a $200–$300 million hit to 2026 earnings from its push into prediction markets — a wager that dwarfs one rough month of soccer results.
History rhymes here, too. Bookmakers usually get bailed out when a favorite falls: U.K. firms faced liabilities running to tens of millions during England’s run to the 2018 semi-final, per Bloomberg, only to be spared when England lost before the final. The 2026 group stage simply refused to hand the books that escape hatch — the favorites kept winning — which is unusual, not catastrophic.
Who actually won: the prediction markets
While sportsbooks sweated every goal, a different corner of the betting world barely broke a sweat. Prediction-market exchanges such as Kalshi and Polymarket take a cut of trading volume rather than booking bets against their users, so they earn their fee no matter which team wins. The World Cup handed them the biggest volume of their lives: according to Forbes, Kalshi alone processed about $2.9 billion in its first week of the tournament — more than was wagered on March Madness or the Champions League — and combined with Polymarket the two cleared $5.4 billion in that opening stretch.
That contrast is the quiet story of the tournament, and it is fueling a broader power shift from sportsbooks to prediction markets. When the favorites all win, the exchange still collects; the sportsbook eats the payout. One model carries the outcome risk. The other rents out the casino floor.
What it means for the knockout rounds
The group stage was uncomfortable; the knockouts are where the real exposure lives. Every book still carries a pile of futures tickets on the United States, and a deep American run — never mind a title — is the outcome traders least want to see. Expect tighter lines, quicker odds moves and heavier promotion of the safe side of USA markets as operators try to balance their books before the exposure resolves. For bettors, the lesson cuts both ways: the same correlated-favorite parlays that just paid out are the hardest bets for a book to price, but they are also the ones books will work hardest to shade going forward.
FAQs
Bank of America analysts estimated DraftKings lost up to $50 million during the group stage, according to reporting by the Financial Times, measured against an estimated $1.1 billion in World Cup betting handle. DraftKings declined to comment and has not disclosed a loss figure of its own.
Yes. Caesars called the U.S. team its worst result in the book, BetMGM said favorites Spain and France were in the red, and Flutter paid out close to $5.5 million to U.K. bettors after England’s opening win, per the Financial Times. DraftKings was simply the largest U.S. operator and the biggest headline.
Losses were driven by favorites winning, not upsets. Heavily backed teams like the United States and England kept advancing, big parlays cashed, and on June 23 stars including Messi, Haaland and Mbappé all scored, lighting up correlated bets that combined a favorite to win with a player to score.
The U.S. men’s national team was the single biggest liability for most American sportsbooks, driven by concentrated patriotic betting, even though only about 3% of global bettors backed it, according to the Financial Times. Its title odds at Caesars shortened from +5000 to +2500 as it advanced.
Analysts and executives expect so. The group-stage figure is an estimate from a single stage of the tournament, the day-to-day business keeps generating revenue, and leadership frames the World Cup as a customer-acquisition investment rather than a loss, with the knockout rounds and future cross-selling still ahead.
Yes. Exchanges such as Kalshi and Polymarket take a fee on trading volume instead of booking bets against users, so they earn regardless of the result. Kalshi processed about $2.9 billion in its first World Cup week, per Forbes, and combined with Polymarket the two reached $5.4 billion.
Eilers & Krejcik Gaming projected U.S. online sportsbooks would take about $4.4 billion in wagers across the tournament, up from roughly $1.8 billion at the 2022 World Cup. That places the event among the largest U.S. betting occasions ever, alongside the Super Bowl and March Madness.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The number is real but unconfirmed — the up-to-$50M figure is a Bank of America estimate reported by the Financial Times; DraftKings declined to comment.
- Context shrinks it — the loss is roughly 4.5% of a projected ~$1.1B handle, and the core business kept printing revenue every week.
- Favorites, not upsets, did the damage — correlated parlays on winning favorites like the USA and England paid out together.
- Prediction markets cashed in — fee-based exchanges like Kalshi banked record volume no matter who won.
- The knockouts are the real test — a deep U.S. run is the exposure books least want to resolve.
Sources
- World Cup betting coverage — Financial Times (Bank of America loss estimate, Flutter payout, betting-share figures)
- “USA Is By Far Our Worst Result In The Book” — FOX Sports (Caesars trading desk)
- France, Argentina top World Cup odds; U.S. puts sportsbooks at risk — ESPN (BetMGM exposure)
- The Numbers Behind The 2026 World Cup — Forbes (handle projections, Kalshi volume)
- Weekly mobile sports wagering reports — New York State Gaming Commission (operator handle and revenue)
- England’s World Cup Defeat Saved Bookies ‘Tens of Millions’ — Bloomberg (2018 precedent)
