DraftKings is building out an in-house market making operation that will place bets on its prediction market, according to a new job listing for a role that will help the betting operator’s trading team to “allocate liquidity” to markets where it is needed.
It is not immediately clear from the job listing whether DraftKings’ team is already making trades on the prediction market now or if the company just plans to do so later. A DraftKings spokesperson did not directly address the question of whether the in-house market maker was already active, or which markets it might trade on, when asked by InGame.
Market makers on prediction markets typically offer bets that other traders can accept on both sides of a given contract. These offers typically sit on a prediction market orderbook as “resting orders,” which become trades if another user agrees to take the bet. This is often referred to as providing liquidity. In a market with a high level of liquidity, traders should be able to take either the “yes” or the “no” side of the bet with only a small difference between the two prices.
Most bettors are more willing to accept bets at a given price than to propose a price of their own due to a phenomenon called adverse selection, so if a market maker provides liquidity, they may be able to encourage a greater volume of betting activity.
Typically, market makers act much like a sportsbook does, offering bets on both sides of a market and making money on the difference between the two prices. DraftKings’ traders already create prices for the company’s sportsbook, so the transition to market making on a prediction market should be a fairly smooth one.
The presence of market makers affiliated with exchanges has been controversial at times. Kalshi, the largest CFTC-regulated prediction market, also owns its own in-house market maker that trades on its own exchange, named Kalshi Trading.
Critics have argued that the presence of an in-house market maker on Kalshi make the platform more like a sportsbook than a truly peer-to-peer exchange, and have expressed concerns about whether a market maker that is connected to the exchange itself may have advantages over other traders.
In November, Kalshi was the subject of a class-action lawsuit that alleged the operator was “duping” customers by advertising a peer-to-peer service while also accepting bets against customers.
In December, DraftKings SVP for Predictions Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto told InGame that an in-house market maker was “an area of interest that we’re exploring but we haven’t made any decisions yet.”
Job listing to help ‘allocate liquidity’
A job listing for “lead analyst, trading analytics” says that DraftKings is seeking an employee who will “play a key role in understanding and optimizing how DraftKings participates across prediction-market-style exchanges.”
In particular, part of the role appears to involve working with DraftKings’ trading team — which prices sportsbook bets — to make trades on its prediction market. DraftKings Predictions launched Dec. 19, 2025.
The description says that the analyst will “Partner with sports traders and trading operations to diagnose issues, improve liquidity allocation, enhance pricing accuracy, and elevate customer experience.”
Improving liquidity allocation and enhancing pricing accuracy could only be done via making trades.
The new hire will also “Deliver insights that inform how we allocate liquidity, structure quoting behavior, and evolve our exchange participation strategy.”
DK offers access to same exchange as FD
DraftKings currently acts as a broker that offers access to contracts offered on commodities giant CME’s prediction exchange. FanDuel also offers users access to the same CME contracts through its own prediction market app.
Therefore, if the DraftKings-owned market maker trades on the CME exchange, it is trading on contracts that are available on both DraftKings Predictions and FanDuel Predicts, and boosting liquidity for customers to both exchanges.
It’s not clear whether FanDuel already operates an in-house market maker. After FanDuel parent company Flutter Entertainment’s third-quarter earnings — in which the business announced plans to offer sports event contracts — Flutter CEO Peter Jackson said the company was looking at the potential of participating as a market maker, but has not made a final decision yet.
In Jackson’s prepared remarks on that call, he said: “The strength of our world-class pricing and risk management capabilities present potential market-making opportunities which we continue to assess.” In the question-and-answer session he was slightly more noncommittal, noting, “It’s something we’re looking at, but in the meantime our focus is on the B2C opportunity.”
DraftKings acquired CFTC-registered prediction market Railbird in October, and is expected to launch that exchange at some point in the near future, but specifics are not yet known. A spokesperson told InGame that DraftKings plans to offer access to multiple exchanges.
It is not clear which markets DraftKings’ trading team may trade on. Markets with less organic volume, such as smaller sports or prop bets, are the most likely to benefit from the presence of an in-house market maker.
Last week, CME self-certified to offer parlay bets on the Super Bowl, meaning those bets could appear on DraftKings Predictions in time for the game. Because of the large number of possible parlays that can be made, and the difficulty of pricing correlated outcomes accurately, dedicated market makers can be especially useful for these types of bets. DraftKings’ trading team would already have experience in pricing correlated parlays.
The CFTC has rules for trading organizations that are affiliated with exchanges or brokers that are intended to limit conflicts of interest. DraftKings, as a broker, must “implement written policies and procedures that mandate the disclosure to its customers of any material incentives and any material conflicts of interest regarding the decision of a customer as to the trade execution and/or clearing of the derivatives transaction.” It is also prohibited from “front-running” orders, which is when a broker receives a large order from a customer, and then places a trade of its own based on the knowledge of that large order before it sends the customer’s trade through to the exchange.
Kalshi’s in-house market maker
In November, Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara wrote that Kalshi Trading is “not profitable.” It is not clear whether she was referring only to Kalshi Trading’s winnings compared to its bets, or if she was also including expenses such as salaries.
She also said Kalshi trading was “less than 6% of the making volume” for sports contracts in November.
During November, $5.82 billion was traded on Kalshi, including around $5.17 billion on sports, according to InGame’s analysis of Kalshi’s trading data.
If Kalshi Trading was the market maker for 6% of sports trades, that means it traded $310 million on sports during the month.
In December, Bloomberg reported that Polymarket was hiring for an in-house market making team of its own.
