NFL joins pushback against prediction markets as U.S. Supreme Court asked to act

The National Football League has joined with tribes, state governments, former regulator Gary Gensler and even one of the lawmakers who penned the law prediction markets are relying on — all of them asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let local gambling regulators police the companies.

The NFL said in its Thursday filing that the league had shared concerns with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which claims a role as the sole regulator of these platforms, about how they conduct sports wagers. But the NFL told the high court that its requests haven’t been answered, leaving betting practices that “pose real challenges to game integrity and consumer protection.” The NFL was among many filing legal briefs this week in the case supporting the states’ argument that they have the right to impose local gambling laws on the emerging prediction markets.

Kalshi, for its part, is saying it has attempted to work through the issue with the NFL several times with no luck.

“We have consistently tried to engage proactively and constructively with the NFL to collaborate on market integrity with no response,” Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana said in a statement.

It also pointed out that it has secured multiple partnerships with other professional sports leagues — including Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League — and that the NFL is standing apart. “All but the NFL have been willing to share data and collaborate to protect game integrity,” Diana said.

The legal authorities underpinning sports wagers on prediction markets has come to a crossroads as one federal court has backed Kalshi’s argument that the CFTC should be its sole regulator and two others have sided with the states’ position that sport betting belongs under the authority of their own gambling laws and regulators. The division in those rulings leaves an uncertain and hazardous legal terrain, the NFL suggested in its legal filing — known as an amicus brief, in which an involved party shares its opinion in a case.

While New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to take the case and make a definitive ruling, the CFTC continues to insist that the exchanges it regulates, including Kalshi and Polymarket, are under its exclusive authority that preempts state powers.

Besides the NFL, other voices have joined in opposition to the position of the CFTC and Kalshi, including a former senator who was one of the authors of the law from which the relevant regulations spring — Senator Chris Dodd of the Dodd-Frank Act. The former Democratic senator called himself “uniquely qualified” on this topic and noted that his bill “did not set out to authorize nationwide sports betting through derivatives markets or displace decades of state and tribal primacy over gaming regulation.”