DraftKings reported second-quarter results that show exactly what happens to a sportsbook when the customers run hot. Revenue came in at $1.44 billion, down 4.6% from a year earlier, and the company swung to a net loss of $67.6 million, or 14 cents a share, from a $157.9 million profit in the same quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA, the profit measure the company emphasizes, fell hard, to $114.6 million from $300.6 million. The figures here come from DraftKings' own earnings release.
The striking part is that this was not a demand problem. Betting volume actually grew: sports handle rose 15% year over year to $13.1 billion, and monthly unique payers climbed 9% to 3.6 million. What fell was how much of that DraftKings got to keep. Its net revenue margin dropped to 6.8% from 8.7% a year earlier, because bettors won more than usual during a quarter that included the NBA Finals and the World Cup. In sportsbook terms, the hold was low; in customer terms, it was a good few months to have a bet.
| DraftKings Q2 | 2026 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $1.44B | $1.51B |
| Net income / (loss) | ($67.6M) | $157.9M |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $114.6M | $300.6M |
| Sports handle | $13.1B | $11.4B |
| Net revenue margin | 6.8% | 8.7% |
Guidance held, not cut
The tell in how DraftKings views the quarter is what it did with its forecast: nothing. It maintained full-year 2026 guidance of $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion in revenue and $700 million to $900 million in adjusted EBITDA. That is a deliberate signal that management sees the weak quarter as variance, the natural downside of the same fair-odds math that produces blowout quarters when favorites cover, rather than a structural miss. It stands in contrast to FanDuel parent Flutter, which cut its outlook after a similar bettor-friendly quarter.
Predictions is the growth story
If the sportsbook was the drag, prediction markets were the headline DraftKings wanted. CEO Jason Robins said the company's Super App is now live nationwide and that its Predictions product, launched only in December 2025, is "already growing faster than we anticipated." On the earnings call the company detailed just how fast: annualized volume on the platform has jumped to around $11 billion from $2.3 billion in a matter of months, with more than 600,000 customers so far and plans to invest hundreds of millions more this year. DraftKings argues the audience barely overlaps with its sportsbook, roughly 1%, and skews heavily toward professional and institutional traders, which is why it sees event contracts as a new market rather than a threat to the old one.
One bad-luck quarter, industry-wide
DraftKings is not alone, and that is the important context. The same customer-friendly results dented Flutter and PENN in the exact same window, a reminder that sportsbook revenue is inherently lumpy and that a single quarter says more about which way the games broke than about the health of the business. Handle up 15% is the number that describes demand; the loss is the number that describes luck.
Our take
The headline, DraftKings loses money, is technically true and mostly misleading. Strip out the sports luck and this is a business whose volume and customer count both grew; it just ran into a quarter where the results favored bettors, which is the price of running a fair market and the mirror image of the quarters when the house cleans up. Maintaining full-year guidance is the clearest signal that DraftKings agrees, and it is the right way to read a low-hold quarter.
For bettors, there are two honest takeaways. First, the run of customer-friendly results across DraftKings, Flutter, and PENN is a real, if temporary, reminder that the edge does swing your way sometimes; it does not change the long-run math, but it is a fair counterweight to the idea that the books always win every month. Second, watch the prediction-markets push. DraftKings is pouring money into event contracts because it believes they reach a new, largely professional audience, and this football season you will see that spending as heavy marketing. As always, those contracts sit in a different, still-contested regulatory lane than the sportsbook. Our full prediction-markets earnings roundup has the cross-company picture.