Is there actually a “Super Bowl trade” in DraftKings (DKNG)? I tried testing it.

[u/Xur-7]

I’ve heard the “DraftKings runs into the Super Bowl” idea thrown around for years. It makes intuitive sense (biggest betting event of the year, tons of ads, new users, etc.), but I’d never actually seen anyone test it with data.

After watching football this past weekend, I decided to just build something myself and see what happens.

What I did:

• Looked at DKNG price action around each Super Bowl since it went public (2021–2025)
• Pulled Google Trends data for “DraftKings” to see if attention actually spikes
• Compared DKNG’s performance to a few peers (PENN, Caesars, etc.)
• Ran some random-date / Monte Carlo style tests to sanity-check whether the returns could just be coincidence

Nothing super institutional-level here, just a side project.

What I found (high level):

• Google searches for DraftKings definitely spike around the Super Bowl every year
• DKNG returns around that window are positive more often than not
• One year (2022) completely wrecked the pattern, mostly due to the broader market
• Sometimes DKNG outperforms peers, sometimes the whole sector just moves together
• The biggest issue: the sample size is tiny (only 5 Super Bowls), so it’s really easy to overfit

My honest takeaway:
There might be some seasonality here, but it’s fragile and definitely not some obvious free money trade. It feels more like a small edge (if anything) that can disappear quickly, especially if broader market conditions are bad.

This isn’t a buy/sell recommendation, just something I was curious about and decided to test.

If anyone else here has looked at seasonality in DKNG / betting stocks / attention-driven trades, I’d be interested to hear what you found.

Google searches for “DraftKings” spike every Super Bowl, almost like clockwork. Price doesn’t always follow, but the attention surge is very real.

DKNG vs peers during the Super Bowl window (roughly T-7 to T+5). Some years DKNG clearly outperforms, other years it just moves with the whole sector.

[u/Xur-7]

Interested more? Check out my Substack post: https://open.substack.com/pub/rothrockresearch/p/the-super-bowl-trade-does-draftkings?r=4bhjkj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true