DraftKings Predictions

What it is

DraftKings Predictions is the event-contract product of DraftKings: a standalone app and website where contracts priced between $0 and $1 pay $1 if an outcome happens and nothing if it does not. The how-to page lists "sports, crypto and more"; the rules page adds stock indices, commodities and economic releases. DraftKings' 2025 annual report dates the launch to 19 December 2025.

It is a broker, not an exchange — but one of the exchanges behind it is DraftKings' own. Three legal layers sit between the button and the clearinghouse:

• The app and the account: GUS III LLC, doing business as DraftKings Predictions. The 10-K for 2025 describes it as a CFTC-registered introducing broker using Wedbush Securities as its futures commission merchant. That has since changed: NFA's register records an FCM application on 27 February 2026, and on 14 July 2026 the FCM registration took effect and the introducing-broker registration was withdrawn. The site footer now reads "Event Contract Trading is offered by DraftKings Predictions, a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant and NFA member."
• The exchanges. The Terms of Use (last updated 4 August 2026) name three: CME; North American Derivatives Exchange, Inc., the former Nadex, which trades as Crypto.com | Derivatives North America; and Railbird Exchange, LLC, defined as "DKeX". The fee schedule splits its table the same way, "CDNA and DKeX Markets" against "CME Markets".
• The clearinghouse for DKeX: Bitnomial Clearinghouse, LLC, named in the same Terms and in the CFTC staff letter of 4 May 2026 about trades "executed on or subject to the rules of Railbird and cleared through Bitnomial". DKeX's own rulebook refers only to "the Clearinghouse".

DKeX is Railbird, renamed in everything but the register. Railbird Exchange was designated a contract market by the CFTC on 13 June 2025; the CFTC's list still shows it under that name. DraftKings acquired Railbird Technologies and its exchange subsidiary in October 2025, for total consideration of $84.8 million according to the 10-K. The original designation order barred any FCM from intermediating trades on Railbird; an amended order in April 2026 removed that bar, which is what let a DraftKings-owned broker route customers onto a DraftKings-owned exchange. The dkex.com domain resolves to Railbird's site, which now carries the DKeX name and a rulebook dated 22 September 2026. Opening a DraftKings Predictions account binds you to that rulebook "as if you were a Member".

How it differs from the sportsbook. The DraftKings Sportsbook is a state-licensed product that quotes its own odds and holds the other side. Here you buy or sell a contract on an exchange, against other participants, with a position you can sell before the event ends, a fee per contract rather than a margin built into the price, and the CFTC rather than a state gaming regulator overseeing the venue. It is a different account, under a different legal entity, with different state availability. The sportsbook itself is outside this catalogue's scope.

Availability

Availability turns on two tests: your state of residence and your physical location. The how-to page says so in as many words — standing in a state where sports markets are offered does not help if your home state does not allow them — and the product is unavailable on tribal land. DraftKings publishes a colour-coded state map with four classes; read off the map as published on 3 October 2026:

The map is an image without a text equivalent, so the smallest states were read by sampling its colours; check the live map before relying on a single state. US territories count as eligible jurisdictions in the page's own wording.

The Terms set the minimum age at 18, or the age of majority where that is higher, and require US residence. Identity verification asks for full legal name, date of birth, Social Security or other tax identification number and a physical address. Nothing in DraftKings' material offers the product outside the United States.

Pricing

One all-in fee per contract, per side, and DraftKings says it includes everything. The fee disclosure as read on 3 October 2026 states that "Total Fees include all applicable FCM commissions and Exchange Fees", and charges the fee each time a position is opened or closed:

The DKeX and Crypto.com column has a step for every cent up to 11¢ and every few cents above it; the table here is a sample. The order's total is the per-contract fee times the number of contracts, rounded up to the next cent — so a single one-cent contract costs a full cent in fees, 12.5 times the per-contract figure.

Why the fee fields read 2% and 2%. At 50¢ both columns charge $0.02 a contract, which is 2% of the $1 payout. The schedule has no maker/taker split, so both fields carry it. A round trip — buying and then selling before settlement — pays it twice; holding to settlement pays it once.

This is the second schedule, not the first. The schedule from the launch period, when Wedbush was the FCM, charged a $0.01 DraftKings commission per contract per side and told customers to check CME's exchange-fee schedule separately. The current table folds both layers into one number. The fee disclosure names no deposit or withdrawal fee; none was checked further.

Markets & resolution

Sports, crypto and financial markets, from three exchanges with three sets of rules. DraftKings' rules page says the governing rules for any market are reached through "View Rules" in the trade slip, and links DKeX's regulatory notices and trading rules, Crypto.com's Nadex and sports event trading rules, and CME's event-contract specifications.

The settlement sources it names are concrete:

• Crypto contracts settle on the "Exp value" Nadex publishes on its market-data page — Crypto.com's exchange — and DraftKings warns results can take 30–60 minutes to appear.
• Stock-index, commodity and economic contracts (S&P 500, Nasdaq, Russell, Dow, euro; crude, natural gas, gold, silver, copper; payrolls, unemployment, the federal funds rate, GDP and CPI) settle on CME's published values.
• Sports contracts settle under the rules of whichever exchange lists them; the page links DKeX's and Crypto.com's but quotes no source of its own.

DraftKings Predictions resolves nothing itself: the Terms say it "does not settle or clear any Commodity Transactions", and point you at each exchange's and clearinghouse's rules for that. On DKeX the rulebook provides an outcome review process (rule 7.1), order-priority rules (rule 5.8) and a request-for-quote system whose quotes come from self-clearing members; the Railbird designation order describes trading on "an anonymous electronic central limit order book", fully collateralised.

All contracts are cash-settled in US dollars.

Integrations

None for a trader. There is no public API for DraftKings Predictions accounts; the app and the website are the only way in. DKeX's rulebook provides for direct self-clearing members and FCMs, but says the self-clearing provisions "will not apply" until its clearinghouse has the necessary approvals, and none of that is a retail route.

The account centre has statement and tax-form pages for the Predictions product, but no published page commits to a form for event contracts: the Predictions terms say only that payments "may be classified as income and reported on Form 1099 as applicable" (read 4 October 2026).

Limitations

• The exchange is the broker's sibling. DraftKings owns the app, the FCM and DKeX. That is legal and disclosed in its filings, but it is a different structure from a broker routing to an unaffiliated exchange, or an exchange you join directly.
• Availability is a patchwork. Twelve states have nothing, twenty-one jurisdictions get no sports markets, and residence and location both have to pass.
• The documents lag the structure. The Terms of Use of 4 August 2026 still describe trades "processed by Wedbush Securities" on DraftKings Predictions' behalf, while the footer and NFA name DraftKings Predictions as the FCM since 14 July 2026. Which accounts, if any, Wedbush still carries is not stated anywhere public.
• 2¢ a side at mid-range prices, rounded up per order, so small orders pay proportionally more.
• Three rulebooks. A sports market on DKeX and one on Crypto.com's exchange can look identical in the app and resolve under different procedures.
• No API, no data export.
• Nobody here has funded an account. Everything above is read from DraftKings' Terms of Use, fee disclosure, availability and rules pages, its 2025 10-K and second-quarter 2026 10-Q, the DKeX rulebook, NFA's register and the CFTC's records, on 3 and 4 October 2026.

Alternatives

Crypto.com offers the CDNA markets in its own app, from the exchange that lists them. Kalshi and Polymarket US are directly accessed US exchanges with wider market lists. Novig and ProphetX are sports-only exchanges. Among the brokers, Robinhood and PrizePicks Predict put their own commission on someone else's exchange — PrizePicks also through an FCM it owns.