Why the NBA Finals Is a Lose-Lose Bet for DraftKings and FanDuel
The 2026 NBA Finals has produced a rare situation for sportsbooks: both teams in the championship represent financial liabilities.
DraftKings and FanDuel are projected to lose money regardless of whether the New York Knicks or San Antonio Spurs win the title, per MarketWatch reporting. The reason differs by team, but the financial result for the books is the same.
Why the Knicks create a liability
The Knicks have attracted roughly half of all NBA Finals betting money on DraftKings this season. That accumulated volume creates a large payout obligation if New York wins.
On FanDuel, 56% of bets are on the Knicks to win the series. The total handle (the aggregate money wagered) on the Knicks stands at 65%. Knicks tickets outnumber Spurs tickets by ~2-to-1, Caesars Sportsbook Pro Basketball Lead David Lieberman told MarketWatch.
Why the Spurs are a bigger problem
The Spurs entered the season at +6,500 odds on DraftKings, meaning a $100 bet would profit $6.5K. That made San Antonio one of the biggest preseason underdogs in league history to reach the Finals.
Even small early bets on San Antonio now carry large payout obligations. A single $50K pre-playoffs wager on the Spurs, placed at +650 odds on BetMGM, carries a potential profit of $325K.
Anthony Parenti, a sports trader for BetMGM, was direct with MarketWatch: "San Antonio is the biggest remaining liability on the futures book." A BetMGM spokesperson confirmed the Spurs represent larger exposure than the Knicks: "Knicks are a loser for the book as well, but Spurs are bigger."
Parenti also assessed the matchup. "The Spurs have the best player and the better overall team, making them clear favorites in the NBA Finals," he said. That view compounds the sportsbook's concern.
The scale of individual wagers
The figures behind specific bets illustrate how concentrated the risk has become. One bettor placed $49K on the Knicks to win the title on DraftKings, with a potential profit of $931K. Another placed $20K on the Knicks at +2,200 odds during the first round on BetMGM, for a potential profit of $440K.
The 2024-25 NFL season provided a recent precedent. That season featured what online sportsbooks described as the most customer-friendly outcomes they had ever recorded, with books incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in losses after a prolonged run of unfavorable results.
Prediction markets add competitive pressure
The NBA Finals liability arrives alongside a separate challenge for the major operators: growing competition from prediction markets. Both DraftKings and FanDuel used recent earnings calls to announce a move into market-making, which involves providing liquidity by posting bid and ask prices on prediction contracts.
DraftKings beat Q1 analyst expectations and maintained its full-year guidance. CEO Jason Robins described the new market-making operation as "one of our fastest to profitability business lines we've ever launched." Robins added there's no reason DraftKings shouldn't rank among the top two or three market makers globally, with participation planned across multiple platforms.
JPMorgan analysts noted that April prediction-market volume per DraftKings customer exceeded sportsbook handle per customer. Citizens analysts called the market-making push "an opportunity that we believe remains underappreciated and could serve as an upside catalyst for the stock."
Flutter Entertainment, FanDuel's parent, beat Q1 expectations but lowered its full-year guidance. Flutter said it began acting as a market maker for a major third-party prediction-market platform in April 2026. CEO Peter Jackson described the strategy as providing market-making "on as many platforms as we can."
The entry of major sportsbooks into market-making has drawn scrutiny. Critics argue it challenges the claim that prediction markets are purely peer-to-peer with no house edge. Garrett Gomes, a partner at merchant bank The Raine Group focused on sports and real money gaming, described the reality to Front Office Sports as nuanced. "Increased market-making activity should improve liquidity and usability, which is a clear positive for platforms and users, while also making the ecosystem look less purely peer-to-peer than it might in theory," he said.
For DraftKings and FanDuel, the prediction-market expansion represents a long-term hedge, even if the short-term pain from the NBA Finals tips in bettors' favor.
