The NFL is taking its stance on prediction markets to the highest court, and the powerful U.S. sports league wants trading exchanges regulated like legal sportsbooks.
- The NFL believes prediction market “swaps” are bets.
- The league sent an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of the New Jersey case against prediction market operators.
- The NFL cites integrity and consumer concerns over prediction market regulation, but the league doesn’t oppose them operating.
The NFL sent an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on Thursday, in which it supports New Jersey’s key lawsuit against prediction market operators and views sports event contracts as gambling. The NFL urged the Supreme Court, which could make a ruling by 2027, to give states regulatory control over prediction markets, a system that the league said has worked since the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was overturned in 2018.
“The NFL has proactively engaged with legal sportsbooks and with state gaming authorities to support the enactment and enforcement of legislation and regulations designed to provide core integrity and consumer protections,” the NFL said in the amicus brief. “But now a new form of sports betting has emerged that undermines these efforts and threatens game integrity: sports betting on prediction markets.”
State authority
The NFL doesn’t oppose trading exchanges like Kalshi and Polymarket offering football contracts, but the league argues that legal sports betting is “among states’ sovereign police powers” and questioned what Constitutional power Congress has to override that. The exchanges are currently regulated at the federal level by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Also, the CFTC’s background has been with financial and economic markets, not sports event contracts, which began being offered in early 2025.
“In the end, we believe that given the current resource constraints of the CFTC, this is a job better left to the states,” the league told CNBC.
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Patiently waiting
The NFL, which is the highest-earning and most valuable sports league in the world, was one of the last to embrace U.S. sports betting operators, and the league has been patient when it comes to prediction market partnerships.
No NFL team has signed a marketing deal with a trading exchange, while several MLB teams have already partnered with Kalshi, Polymarket, and Novig. The league has tried to work with Kalshi on providing consumer safeguards, but the NFL says the prediction market operator and others have “resisted the commonsense measures.” Newcomer Novig decided before the season to adhere to the NFL’s request.
The NFL also sent proposed rulemaking to the CFTC in May, voicing its integrity concerns over easily manipulated markets, like a kicker missing a kick or injuries to players, that are being offered on trading exchanges with little oversight. Those come with strict regulation and prohibitions in sports betting, the league says.
The NFL also believes the age requirement to trade should increase from 18 to 21, a standard across the sports betting industry. The CFTC has yet to respond to the league’s request for a regulatory framework.
“Although the NFL, among others, has encouraged (the CFTC) and (the Designated Contract Markets) to adopt safeguards and rules for sports wagering like those in the state-regulated world of traditional LSBs, the Commission and DCMs so far have stuck to a more laissez-faire approach,” the league wrote.
Taking exception
Meanwhile, the league says billions of dollars are being traded on NFL markets every week this season.
“Event contracts related to NFL games make up a substantial share of these markets’ overall trading volume: On the first Sunday of this NFL season, more than half of all prediction-markets’ trading volume – $1.8 billion out of $3.3 billion total – related to the NFL,” the league told the Supreme Court.
Kalshi and other prediction market operators have argued in lawsuits that they offer “swaps,” not bets, under the Commodity Exchange Act. The NFL opposes that view and says that trading exchanges are evading “states’ carefully crafted protections.”
Following the Sixth and Ninth Circuit decisions that favor states over prediction markets, the NFL asked the Supreme Court to grant certiorari “before another NFL season goes by,” citing the potential consumer harm and risks to game integrity a further delay would lead to.
“On the DCMs’ view, they may offer NFL-related event contracts without regard to state law, and entirely outside the framework of traditional state regulation of sports wagering,” the NFL wrote. “For those reasons, the question presented by the petition in this case has broad ramifications for amicus and other professional sports leagues, teams, and governing bodies who share the NFL’s interest in the integrity of their competitions.”
