IG’s $2 Billion Bet: Turning Sports Fans into Market Traders

IG Group is throwing down potentially over $2B to buy Underdog, and the whole play is basically a giant customer‑funnel hack. Underdog has 11M registered users way more than IG’s 1.4M and IG clearly wants to turn sports‑obsessed app users into full‑blown market traders. The deal starts at $1.3B but could rocket past $2B if Underdog hits some ambitious 2028 earnings targets.

This is all part of IG’s plan to go huge in the US. After buying tastytrade in 2021, IG wants to double its US revenue and 10x its active users. Underdog’s prediction market pivot has been printing money $466M net revenue in the last year so IG is betting that those users can be nudged from sports outcomes into crypto, macro, politics, and financial markets.

IG’s CEO has already said prediction markets are basically rebranded binary options, so don’t expect this business to land in Europe anytime soon. But in the US, combining IG and Underdog would’ve made America 40% of IG’s revenue in 2025 and diversified the company away from relying on one product line.

IG says the deal won’t boost earnings immediately, but by year three they expect double‑digit gains and returns above their cost of capital. In other words, they’re playing the long game and hoping Underdog’s sports fans are ready to level up into market speculation.