Trading platform entry products are doing a different job from the revenue lines that actually fund five of the industry’s biggest brokers and exchanges. The latest half-year and quarterly disclosures confirm that trading platform entry products serve mainly as acquisition tools: platforms use simpler or more topical products to bring clients in, then rely on CFDs (contracts for difference, a form of leveraged derivative), options and higher-margin instruments to generate most of their income.
XTB: The Split Is Already Visible
At XTB, the divergence between what new clients first trade and what funds the business is the clearest of any firm in this group. During H1 2026, shares accounted for 38.8% of new EU clients’ first transactions, ETFs for 27.7% and Investment Plans for 16.4%. CFDs represented just 17.0% of first transactions.
The revenue picture was almost the mirror image. CFDs generated PLN 1.98 billion of XTB’s PLN 2.07 billion gross result from financial instruments, roughly 96% of the total. Within that, commodity CFDs alone accounted for 75.3% of the gross result, with index-based CFDs contributing a further 13.9%, according to XTB’s H1 2026 results.
XTB added 703,333 new clients across H1 2026, bringing total active clients to 1.49 million. Total operating revenue reached nearly PLN 2.09 billion and estimated consolidated net profit came to almost PLN 1.03 billion for the period.
IG’s Underdog Acquisition Builds the Same Funnel in the US
IG Group is trying to construct a version of that split in the United States. On 30 July 2026, the same day it reported H1 results, IG announced the proposed acquisition of Underdog for an aggregate of up to approximately $1.3 billion: an upfront enterprise value of approximately $1.1 billion plus an earnout of approximately $200 million tied to net gaming revenue targets and positive EBITDA.
The upfront equity value of approximately $963 million will be settled through around 24.1 million new IG ordinary shares and about $380 million in cash. IG will also repay approximately $160 million of Underdog debt on completion, per the IG Group acquisition announcement. The deal values Underdog at 2.4 times its trailing 12-month net revenue through June 2026, according to Yahoo Finance.
The rationale is that Underdog’s prediction markets and sports audience give IG a route from event contracts into active trading and financial derivatives through tastytrade, its existing US brokerage. IG expects the deal to more than double its US revenue and increase US monthly active customers more than tenfold. The acquisition is expected to be broadly neutral to adjusted EPS in year one and double-digit percent accretive by year three, per the IG filing.
IG’s H1 2026 results showed total revenue up 18% to £642.8 million and adjusted EPS up 21% to 68.9p, though the EBITDA margin compressed to 43.9% from 49.6%. Markets responded poorly to the deal price: IG shares fell approximately 11% to around 1,522p the morning after the announcement, from a prior close of 1,706p, according to European Gaming. IG also paused its share buyback programme, with resumption expected in 2027, as Reuters reported.
Robinhood Shows How Trading Platform Entry Products Scale Fast
Robinhood provides the most detailed public data on how quickly an entry product can become material. Revenue from event contracts (binary-outcome wagers on real-world events) reached $156 million in Q2 2026, up from roughly $10 million in Q2 2025, per an AffPapa revenue breakdown corroborated by the Robinhood Q2 2026 earnings release. Event contracts traded rose more than tenfold year on year, to 13.6 billion.
That growth put event contracts ahead of equities ($129 million) and crypto ($100 million) in the same quarter. Options, however, generated $342 million, more than double event contracts. Total transaction-based revenue was $776 million.
Robinhood’s overall Q2 2026 total net revenues rose 32% year-over-year to a record $1.31 billion, with diluted EPS of $0.62, up 48%. Net deposits reached a record $22 billion. Event contracts are now a meaningful revenue line, but options remain the platform’s largest disclosed trading income source by a wide margin.
Binance and Coinbase Apply Trading Platform Entry Products From Inside Crypto
Binance reported that 41.5% of its tokenised stock users (bStocks) were entering traditional financial markets for the first time, while 58.5% also traded perpetual futures, direct equities or both alongside the tokens. Coinbase’s “Everything Exchange” strategy assembles crypto, equities, derivatives and prediction markets on one platform, using zero-fee equity trading as a low-friction entry point into a broader product set.
Across all five platforms, the pattern holds. New products widen the front door. Established and higher-margin products still fund the building.
For holders of IG Group shares, the immediate test is whether Underdog’s sports audience converts into active traders at the pace the deal’s earnout implies. That approximately $200 million earnout is payable only on hitting net gaming revenue targets, so the year-three accretion case rests entirely on that conversion rate materialising.
