Betting language creeps into Robinhood’s RIA conference

Current U.S. law does not consider prediction markets to be gambling, but talk of sports betting made its way into Robinhood’s TradePMR Synergy Conference on Wednesday at the JW Marriott in Washington D.C.

Robinhood’s head of concierge services Pat Dunn and TradePMR’s chief client growth officer Bill Coppell were joined on a panel with Robinhood client Ryan Frankel, who wired in remotely via a live video stream. Frankel, who is in his 40s and runs his own marketing agency in Florida, said he first opened a self-investing Robinhood account in June 2020 with around $100,000, in addition to having other accounts managed by a financial advisor outside of Robinhood.

“Over the last five or six years, I was 37, 38 at the time, my account now at Robinhood has grown into a multi-million dollar account. It has gone from being my play money account to the more aggressive side of my portfolio,” said Frankel. “It's grown into a substantial amount of money, and now I have a decent split of investments in that. It ranges from some prediction bets I’ve got on the Inter Miami game going to the final championship, although they're small, all the way up to S&P 500 ETFs in there now.”

Robinhood bought Florida-based custodian TradePMR for $300 million in late-2024. Robinhood’s app for investing and stock-trading also integrates with prediction markets supplied by Kalshi. The Robinhood app offers prediction markets on sports events from top leagues including Major League Soccer as referenced by Frankel, as well as political contracts such as predicting the winner of the Los Angeles mayoral race. 

“Ryan, you had mentioned you're putting some prediction wagers, if you will, on an upcoming game. Tell us a little bit about your thought process,” Coppel asked Frankel on stage.

“It's probably a $500 bet, so it's not like I've made a massive bet on the game, but I probably check it as much as I do my portfolio,” said Frankel. 

Robinhood is moving beyond its partnership with Kalshi to further its direct place in prediction markets as event contracts for the upcoming FIFA World Cup will be held on Rothera, a US-based derivatives exchange that Robinhood and Susquehanna International Group jointly acquired a majority stake in last year.

“What's even astonishing is they'll have a plan going into even event contracts, like the thoughtfulness that many go into these. You may love [Lionel] Messi, and this is not investment advice, but you may love Messi, put money on Inter Miami. They'll watch that contract, put in limit orders and get out before the game's finished,” Dunn said while describing Robinhood investor behavior at Synergy.

“They'll have plans and processes, that's not to say there aren't some people that just willy nilly, they wing it, and they get lucky,” added Dunn. 

Kalshi, whose investors include Charles Schwab and which counts Donald Trump Jr. as a strategic advisor, has recently stopped using the words “betting” and “gambling” in its trademark filings, according to Sportico. Over the past year, Kalshi has used marketing copy such as “Bet on the NFL, Legal in 50 states” to describe its prediction markets. 

Robinhood has already processed more than 16 billion event contracts this year, surpassing the 12 billion contracts traded across 2025. While sports betting is regulated on a state-by-state basis by gambling commissions, prediction markets operate under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Minnesota recently became the first state to ban prediction markets, and now faces lawsuits from the Trump administration, Kalshi and Polymarket.