The 2026 FIFA World Cup begins Thursday and is expected to be the largest betting event ever . Wall Street thinks there’s one big winner. In a report issued Thursday, Bernstein said DraftKings appears to be the clearest gambling beneficiary from the tournament. “Its edge is in its marketing rails: the multi-year NBCUniversal tie-in and Telemundo’s exclusive Spanish-language rights hand DraftKings’ Spanish-language app a privileged funnel into the highest-intent, most soccer-avid betting demographic in the country,” analyst Ian Moore wrote. Moore added that the World Cup will prove a boon to DraftKing’s prediction markets business. Earlier this week, the Boston-based gambling platform said its predictions business saw $1.3 billion in annualized consumer volume in May, up 24% from April. That’s small compared to the volumes processed by Kalshi and Polymarket, but moved DraftKings closer to becoming competitive in an area that has threatened its sportsbook business and weighed on its stock. DKNG 1Y mountain DraftKings 1-year chart. DraftKings understands the opportunity from the World Cup. “Combined with our unified platform strategy, which allows customers to access either sportsbook or sports predictions, depending on location, and includes a Spanish-language feature, we believe the tournament has the potential to be a meaningful driver of both new customer acquisition and strong engagement across our existing customer base,” the company told CNBC. Three in five bettors in states where sports gambling is legal plan on wagering on the soccer tournament, and nearly one in five is expected to place their first bet ever, according to a Bank of America report using Paysafe data. Oppenheimer analyst Jed Kelly, who rates DraftKings a buy, wrote Thursday that the company’s push into prediction markets via the World Cup will serve as a trial run to prepare the platform for a rush of volume in the fall to coincide with the NFL season. “We believe DKNG can leverage product/[customer acquisition costs], competencies, its vertical stack, and internal market-making to develop category-leading Prediction Markets (PMs) for sportsfirst players into NFL,” Kelly wrote. — CNBC’s Contessa Brewer contributed reporting
Wall Street sees one clear winner from the World Cup gambling boom
