The latest disclosures from brokers, exchanges and retail trading apps show firms experimenting with simpler or more topical products, while keeping their economics tied to the trading lines they already know how to monetise. That creates a split between acquisition and monetisation. Shares, event contracts and tokenised stocks can bring users into a platform before the economics shift towards CFDs, options, derivatives or broader multi-product activity.XTB's Clients Start with Shares, but CFDs Still Fund the BusinessNew European clients are starting on XTB through investment products rather than leveraged trading. During the first half of 2026, shares accounted for 38.8% of new EU clients' first transactions, ETFs for 27.7% and Investment Plans for 16.4%. CFDs represented 17.0%.The revenue profile ran in the opposite direction. According to XTB's first-half results, CFDs generated PLN 1.98 billion of the company's PLN 2.07 billion gross result from financial instruments, or about 96% of the total. Investment products provided most first transactions. CFDs supplied almost all of the trading result. XTB acquired 703,333 new clients during the period.[#highlighted-links#]IG Is Building a US Funnel from Sports to DerivativesIG is trying to create a different version of that funnel in the United States. Its proposed acquisition of Underdog, for up to approximately $1.3 billion, would add prediction markets and a vertically integrated licence stack covering brokerage, exchange and clearing. IG said the transaction would give it a route from sports and event contracts into active trading and financial derivatives through tastytrade.The company expects that the deal would more than double its US revenue and increase its US monthly active customers more than tenfold. Unlike XTB, where the split is already visible in client behaviour and revenue data, IG's model remains prospective.The transaction follows tastytrade's own launch of prediction markets covering commodities, crypto, and economic and financial events. IG's first-half active customer base increased 66% to 843,600, including acquisitions.Robinhood's Event Contracts Grow Fast, but Options Still Earn MoreRobinhood's numbers show how quickly a new entry product can become material once it sits inside a large retail platform. Revenue from event contracts reached $156 million in the second quarter, according to the company's Q2 results, rising more than tenfold year on year. Event contracts traded also rose more than tenfold, to 13.6 billion. Total transaction-based revenue reached $776 million.Event contracts generated more revenue than equities, at $129 million, and more than cryptocurrencies, at $100 million. They still generated less than options, at $342 million. The fastest-growing reported transaction product therefore remains behind the platform's largest disclosed trading revenue line.Binance and Coinbase Go Beyond CryptoBinance is using tokenised stocks as a lower-friction way into traditional assets from crypto. The exchange said 41.5% of bStocks users were entering traditional financial markets for the first time, while 58.5% also traded perpetual futures, direct equities or both alongside the tokens. Coinbase has built the entry-product logic into a broader platform architecture. Its "Everything Exchange" strategy combines crypto with equities, derivatives and prediction markets in one system, using products such as zero-fee equity trading as lower-friction entry points into a wider set of products.Across the five companies, the evidence supports a narrower conclusion than a single industry playbook: platforms are using new products to widen the front door, while their main revenue engines remain tied to more established trading lines or have yet to be proven.This article was written by Tanya Chepkova at www.financemagnates.com.