Fanatics could lift advertising spending for its betting and gaming business to as much as $1 billion in 2027, nearly tripling its planned $350 million outlay for this year. The prospective increase would put its marketing budget in the same range as those of DraftKings and FanDuel.
Michael Rubin told Bloomberg that the company was prepared to spend more heavily to close the market-share gap with the two established leaders. Fanatics is a distant third in US sports betting, with roughly 10% of the market after entering online sports betting in 2023.
“We’re going to spend a lot more money in marketing next year than we had thought we were going to spend,” Rubin said, framing the decision as an effort to grow market share. The company’s stated goal is to become the leading domestic sportsbook operator, matching its position in sports apparel and collectibles.
Fanatics expects total 2026 revenue of about $14 billion, including roughly $2 billion from sports gambling. It also projects $2 billion in free cash flow, about $1 billion in net cash and no debt, giving the privately held group scope to finance betting marketing from its wider operations without the quarterly shareholder pressure on listed rivals.
Rubin owns about 31% of Fanatics and said he had no interest in pursuing an initial public offering in the near or medium term. Fanatics is privately valued at $31 billion.
The planned expenditure comes as prediction markets intensify competition for sportsbook customers. Rubin said Kalshi and Polymarket would make betting and gaming more complicated in 2027, alongside Fanatics increasing its own marketing to the level of FanDuel and DraftKings.
Fanatics entered federally regulated prediction markets ahead of its two principal sportsbook rivals. Its Fanatics Markets service launched in December 2025 through a brokerage arrangement with Crypto.com-owned Nadex, after Fanatics acquired CFTC-approved introducing broker Paragon Global Markets to route customer trades to Nadex.
The service initially offered sports, political and financial markets, with an incremental rollout planned in 24 states where Fanatics did not operate a sportsbook. Prediction-market platforms cleared by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can operate in states that prohibit sportsbooks, although that position has faced legal challenges.
The legal position remains unsettled. A Ninth Circuit ruling found that states can regulate sports-related prediction contracts as gambling, while a conflicting Third Circuit decision sided with the platforms, creating a split that could lead to Supreme Court review.
