Robinhood shifts World Cup bets to its own platform, moving away from Kalshi

Robinhood just did what Robinhood always does: it found someone else’s business model and decided to build its own version. On June 4, the company began routing select FIFA World Cup prediction market contracts through Rothera, a US derivatives exchange that Robinhood majority-owns, instead of sending them to its existing partner Kalshi.

The move covers the contracts most people actually care about. Individual match outcomes, the overall tournament winner, and total goals scored now flow through Rothera. Meanwhile, player-specific markets and combination bets stay on Kalshi, at least for now.

What Rothera actually is, and why it matters

Rothera is a US derivatives exchange co-owned by Robinhood and Susquehanna International Group, the quantitative trading powerhouse. The partnership dates back to 2025, and this World Cup routing shift represents the first real stress test of whether Rothera can handle high-volume retail prediction market activity.

The timing is deliberate. The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in roughly 44 days, which means Robinhood is giving itself a live, high-stakes trial run during one of the most-watched sporting events on the planet.

Robinhood’s prediction markets remain commission-free, and contract resolution is still handled by CFTC-regulated exchanges.

The Kalshi relationship gets complicated

The split is surgical rather than total. Core contracts—the ones with the broadest appeal and highest volume potential—go to Rothera. Niche markets like individual player performance bets stay with Kalshi.

For Kalshi, losing the marquee World Cup contracts to a partner-turned-competitor is a significant development. The prediction market startup has been one of the early movers in CFTC-regulated event contracts.

What this means for the prediction market landscape

Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket demonstrated during the 2024 US election cycle that there is genuine retail demand for event-based contracts. Robinhood first ventured into prediction markets in late 2024 with notable election-related contracts, then advanced through a formal partnership with Kalshi, allowing it to offer prediction markets in politics, economics, and major sports.

The commission-free model is a meaningful differentiator in a market where Kalshi and others charge fees on trades.

The World Cup timing gives Robinhood a concentrated window of intense activity to gather performance data on liquidity and fee structures as it navigates the expanding landscape of sports betting and event prediction markets.

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