The NFL is asking the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to insert prediction market guardrails centered around the pro football league.
Key Takeaways
- The NFL wants prediction market platforms to stop offering easily manipulated contracts.
- Like the NBA, the NFL asked to raise the age limit from 18 to 21.
- The CFTC is currently involved in multiple legal battles with states over sports event contracts.
Brendon Plack, the NFL’s senior vice president for government affairs and public policy, wrote a letter, obtained by CNBC, dated Friday to CFTC chair Michael Selig, suggesting measures that would protect the “integrity of the sporting events to which prediction contracts relate.”
The NFL wants to see certain player props, like an incomplete pass, and “inherently objectionable” markets like injuries, eliminated from prediction platforms, as the league feels they are are easily manipulated.
Enjoying Covers content? Add us as a preferred source on your Google account
Stepping in
The NFL joined several other pro leagues, including the NBA, in asking the CFTC to raise the age limit of prediction market users who can purchase contracts from 18 to 21. Plack asked the CFTC to develop a certification process for individual player performance contracts instead of allowing platforms to self-certify.
The NFL also asked for platforms to agree with leagues on what contracts can be offered and ban risky margin trading.
“The permittance of event contracts that are not fully collateralized, as some have suggested, particularly related to sports markets, could amplify addictive behavior and loss risk,” Plack wrote in the letter.
Rise of prediction markets
The CFTC is in the process of building a new regulatory framework for prediction market sites, which have exploded since the fall of 2024.
Platforms began offering sports event contracts in early 2025, and markets have evolved to look similar to what legal, state-regulated sportsbooks use.
Plack told the CFTC he would like for the National Futures Association to share data and help enforce individual trading by teaming up with state gaming authorities.
Court battles
However, the CFTC is currently embroiled in multiple legal conflicts with states, which is currently shaping prediction market news. The federal agency has filed lawsuits on behalf of Kalshi and other embattled platforms against Illinois, Arizona, Connecticut, and Wisconsin.
State attorneys general and gaming regulators in over a dozen jurisdictions have tried to stop prediction companies like Kalshi and Polymarket from offering sports event contracts and other types of trades in states with licensed, regulated, and taxed sports betting.
Ultimately, it’s a battle likely headed to the Supreme Court.
