Macquarie Is Bullish on Gambling Stocks and Prediction Markets Growth

Macquarie, one of Australia’s largest banks, remains positive on gaming stocks heading into the Q3 results season, despite gambling companies’ shares falling 12% over the past month. Macquarie Publishes Its Analysis Ahead of Q3 Results According to an October 7 preview note, Macquarie thinks that US online betting and iGaming operators are poised for growth in the third quarter. The news comes as August saw a slight drop as the amount wagered fell by 1%. This came after the previous month saw a significant boost in July, helped in large part by the 2026 FIFA World Cup. In a separate analysis in July, Macquarie also praised the prediction market sector’s growth as analyst Chad Beynon said that prediction markets’ volume could be on track to reach $1.5 trillion by the end of this decade. Back to the newest analysis, Baynon and his Macquarie colleagues Aaron Lee and Sam Ghafir said they expect third-quarter commentary to be cautiously optimistic and believe it could serve as a positive catalyst for the sector. The analysts also noted that meetings at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas last week, alongside publicly available data, support their view that the industry remains resilient. Speaking of G2E, is hosted the second annual G2E Dealer Championship, which saw Mohegan Sun games dealer Emely Pascual-Alvarez emerge victorious from the tournament after competing against more than 20 other dealers. Once again, looking back at the Macquarie analysis, it identified Flutter, Genius Sports, and Sportradar as its preferred online gaming stocks. Despite that, it still lowered its price targets for Flutter to $128 from $150 and DraftKings to $34 from $38. Macquarie Is Bullish on Prediction Markets Also According to Macquarie’s analysis, prediction markets are also set up for more growth. Prediction market taker volume, a key driver of fee income, was forecast to reach around $19 billion in September, which represents a year-on-year increase of just over 1%. Macquarie attributed the surge to the start of the NFL and college football seasons, building on the boost from the FIFA World Cup. The analysts noted that prediction markets generated $4.3 billion in volume during the first week of September, despite no NFL games being played. Volume then reached a daily record of $802 million on the opening NFL Sunday. Macquarie expects Kalshi to account for roughly 70% of the market in September. If you want to read more of what Macquarie had to say about prediction markets, we wrote an article going over it in more detail.