By Nick Devor
Gambling firm Flutter missed Wall Street's fourth-quarter-earnings expectations on Thursday afternoon. The company's forecast for its full-year results in the U.S. also came up short. Shares were sliding on the news.
As parent company of U.S. sportsbook FanDuel and one of the largest betting brands in the world, Flutter has been under significant pressure over the last year as prediction markets that closely mimic sports betting threaten to steal its business. Flutter's stock price is down by nearly 50% since the company's last earnings report in mid November.
For the fourth quarter, Flutter reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.74. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting $1.85. Revenue came in at $4.74 billion versus Wall Street's estimate for $4.93 billion.
The company said it now expects full-year 2026 revenue of $7.8 billion in the U.S., a near 10% miss from analysts' $8.7 billion estimate.
The stock was down 5.8% in after-hours trading on the results.
CEO Peter Jackson told Barron's that a somewhat boring NFL season was one reason for the weaker-than-expected results.
"I think it's fair to say the NFL season was not as exciting as we hoped, " Jackson says. Fewer nail-biting team and player narratives left bettors uninspired to make long-shot parlay bets, the bread and butter of the company's U.S. business, he said.
But Flutter's international full-year guidance beat analysts' expectations, Jackson said, and he hopes investors keep the full scale of the business in mind.
"A lot of people can be quite myopic" Jackson told Barron's. "Ultimately, we have a huge total addressable market to go after internationally."
Past success in the U.S. market has provided a road map for the global business. In Italy, Flutter followed Americans' love of their same-game-parlay product. Focusing on parlays in Italy has "given us several points of additional market share in sports since we launched that into the start of the soccer season last year," Jackson says. "It's a great example of us driving collaboration across the world."
Prediction markets have been a cause for concern across betting businesses this year, including for DraftKings, FanDuel's primary competitor.
The event contracts sold on prediction markets are available nationwide, allowing customers in states without legal sports betting to trade sports-related contracts. DraftKings and FanDuel launched their own prediction market platforms last year -- both as defense against nascent platforms like Kalshi and to acquire new customers in states they'd previously been cut out of.
The two companies hope that bringing a prediction market to a state that hasn't legalized sports betting will prompt the state legislature to consider legalization. Since event contracts are federally regulated, states don't get a tax cut of the bets made on prediction markets.
"I am confident that we're going to see more shoes dropping in terms of states passing the legislation to allow online sports betting," Jackson said.
Jackson generally played down the threat from prediction markets.
Missouri, which opened online sports betting to its residents at the beginning of December 2025 at the height of prediction-market mania gave FanDuel one of its most successful state launches ever, Jackson said.
"We reached 5% of the population in the first 30 days. And I think what that shows us is that when consumers are given the choice between regulated sports betting and prediction markets, they will choose regulated sports betting -- and of course, we know FanDuel's the leader, so they'll choose FanDuel."
Write to Nick Devor at nicholas.devor@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 26, 2026 16:25 ET (21:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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