In short: Cited disapprovingly as where a generation's investable savings are going, with the house-edge statistic attached: "I saw from Bloomberg a chart — 65% of generation Z takes funds from investing and is on these gambling sites like DraftKings and stuff where only 0.1% of the people on there, which are running huge computer models, get 90% of the profits… We've created a gamblers mentality. Not an investing mentality." A view on the activity, not a short thesis on the equity.
17:59saw from Bloomberg a chart 65% of generation Z — takes funds from investing and is on these gambling sites like DraftKings and stuff where only 0.1% of the people on there which are running huge computer models — get 90% of the profits. Okay. — Yeah. — Or on Polymarket or Kalshi. And this is the mentality.
In short: Collateral damage from the same cohort shift into prediction markets: "Bitcoin is no longer the cool toy. Kalshi is. Just ask DraftKings, which is facing the same fate as Blockbuster. Being early is no guarantee of survival. Adapting is."
DraftKings pioneered mainstream online betting in the US — and Eisman thinks that is precisely its problem. The speculative energy that used to go into sports betting and crypto is migrating to prediction markets like Kalshi, where users bet on real-world outcomes rather than games.
His comparison is deliberately harsh: DraftKings is "facing the same fate as Blockbuster." Blockbuster wasn't beaten because it arrived late; it was beaten because it was first, comfortable, and slow to change format. The rule he draws: "being early is no guarantee of survival. Adapting is."
25:21Bitcoin is no longer the cool toy. Cali is. Just ask DraftKings, which is facing the same fate as Blockbuster. Being early is no guarantee of survival. Adapting is. As another example, it Toro Group reported this week. E Toro is a global social investment and multi-asset brokerage platform that lets users trade and invest in stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.
In short: Predictions get expensive. Q2 revenue fell 5% Y/Y to $1.44B (an $80M miss) with adjusted EPS of $0.09 missing by $0.10 and adjusted EBITDA dropping to $115M from $301M a year ago. The disconnect is the lesson: sports consumer volume still rose 15% to $13.1B and monthly unique payers +9% to 3.6 million, slightly ahead of consensus — but customer-friendly sports outcomes and heavier promotions pushed average revenue per payer down 13% to $132. "The quarter was a reminder that rising betting volume does not always translate cleanly into revenue." Predictions is scaling faster than management expected: the Super App is live nationwide, and Jason Robins said Predictions customer behavior increasingly resembles Sportsbook, supporting the view that DraftKings' existing base and lifetime-value advantage can win the category — at the cost of promotions that were "a meaningful drag on Q2 revenue and profitability." Despite the miss, FY26 guidance was maintained at $6.5–$6.9B of revenue and $700–$900M of adjusted EBITDA, with the core business still expected to generate roughly $1B of EBITDA before Predictions investment, "giving it room to keep spending ahead of football season."
DraftKings is FanDuel's main US rival, and its quarter illustrates a counterintuitive point: more betting did not mean more revenue. The total amount wagered rose 15% to $13.1 billion and the number of paying customers rose 9% — yet revenue fell 5% and profit collapsed from $301 million to $115 million.
Why? Because a bookmaker's revenue is what it keeps from the money wagered, and two things reduced that. Sports results favoured bettors — a matter of luck that evens out over time. And DraftKings handed out far more promotional credit, which is a choice. Together they cut revenue per customer by 13%.
Most of the promotional spending is aimed at prediction markets, where customers trade on the probability of events rather than betting at fixed odds. DraftKings' combined "Super App" is now live nationwide, and management says prediction customers behave much like sportsbook customers — meaning its existing base gives it an advantage in a category that is scaling faster than expected.
Despite missing badly, the company kept its full-year targets, arguing the core business still produces around $1 billion of profit before prediction-market spending — the budget it is deliberately using to buy position ahead of football season. That combination of a bad print and a maintained plan is why the read is neutral rather than negative.
In short: "Which is suffering a bit from just rising competition," reporting Thursday after the close.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Societal example, no equity stance: he "used to mess around" with DraftKings and argues daily-fantasy/prediction markets are a skill game the computing-power houses win — "0.4% of entities make ~95% of the profits, the average person has no chance." A symptom of a gambling-over-reading culture, not a pick.
37:36And I think I read a stat on the prediction markets. I used to mess around a little bit with DraftKings when it first came out just because I thought it was interesting. And I quickly realized it was just like every other endeavor. If you have the computing power, I think you can win most of the money from people if you can set up the programs, because it is a skill. I remember talking to somebody and they said, oh, it's just luck. They banned DraftKings, for example, in Texas for many years, and I actually wrote to one of the legislators and said, I will play you a hundred games of baseball head-to-head on DraftKings and I will beat you most of the time. I will have a profitable outcome because it is to a certain extent a skill — knowing to stack your team if you're going to be at Coors Field or stadiums that have positive hitter results, or analyzing the pitchers that night. If you don't know how to do that and you just say, well, I like the Astros so I put Astros every day — somebody that actually knows what they're doing and knows all these stats, and especially if they have a computer that can help them like Ed Thorp would do, mathematicians, they would be able to get an edge and just dominate you. And that's why I think the same thing on these prediction markets — I think that like 0.4% of the people or entities that are engaged in these things make like 95% of the profits. The average person has no chance.
Nothing matches this filter.
Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.