Robinhood Launches March Madness Event Contracts With Kalshi: 'Change The World Of Finance And Trading'

by Chris Katje Benzinga Staff Writer

Brokerage Robinhood Markets HOOD is launching more event contracts after its successful launch of 2024 election contracts for users.

What Happened: On Monday, Robinhood announced it is launching event contracts for every match-up and the championship for the NCAA Men's College Basketball and NCAA Women's College Basketball Tournaments.

The news follows Robinhood's previously announced partnership with prediction market Kalshi, which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Robinhood previously planned to launch Super Bowl event contracts before pulling out after concerns from the CFTC.

The new contracts will be available to U.S. Robinhood users during the trading hours of 8 a.m. ET to 3 a.m. ET.

"Now you can trade on the outcome of every match-up in the men's and women's college basketball tournaments, including the final championships," Robinhood said.

The contracts have costs in cents and will cash out at $1 if the team wins or $0 if they lose. Users can also cash out of their positions at any time before the match-up is over.

"The Robinhood engineering team was working in lockstep with us to ensure a smooth launch at market open. We did it with elections and now we will do it for sports, together we will change the world of finance and trading. Welcome to the show, Robinhood," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour tweeted.

Why It's Important: The launch of the March Madness events contracts continues Robinhood's push into regulated sports betting with Kalshi.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev recently highlighted the future potential of events contracts after the success of hundreds of millions of 2024 election contracts traded.

"Prediction markets are the future, not just as an active trading asset, but also news and information," Tenev said.

Robinhood will collect a commission of $0.01 per contract. While this seems minimal, it could add up quickly if hundreds of millions of contracts are traded during the March Madness tournaments.

For sportsbooks like DraftKings Inc. DKNG and Flutter Entertainment FLUT, which own FanDuel, Robinhood's new event contracts could reduce their market share during the tournament.

HOOD Price Action: Robinhood stock is up 5.5% to $41.42 on Monday versus a 52-week trading range of $13.98 to $66.08. Robinhood stock is up 4.3% year-to-date in 2025 and up 125.9% over the last year.

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