On Thursday, the NFL filed an amicus brief in support of New Jersey’s cert petition against Kalshi, urging the Supreme Court to determine whether the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) holds exclusive jurisdiction to oversee sports wagering conducted through prediction markets.
The league’s filing emphasizes worries about “increasing consumer harm and risk to game integrity” created by wagering on predictions markets. It accuses the CFTC and platforms like Kalshi of adopting a “laissez-faire approach” to implementing safeguards and rules.
In its submission, the NFL notes that Kalshi and similar venues appear reluctant to accept the league’s list of prohibited bets designed to deter market manipulation and insider trading, and to ensure that anyone placing bets on sports is at least 21 years of age. The NFL further contends that the CFTC lacks “adequate staff engaged in oversight and enforcement” because the agency reportedly employs only 543 people, compared with the hundreds of workers assigned to monitor each state’s gambling industry.
“I think the NFL is arguing that they want prediction markets to operate under the same regulatory framework as traditional sports betting so they can partner with them as the NHL and Major League Baseball have done,” explains Andrew Brandt, executive director at Villanova University’s Moorad Center for Sports Law.
In contrast to its peers in MLB, the NHL, and MLS, the NFL has thus far resisted entering into partnerships with prediction markets. While MLB and the NHL have signed memoranda of understanding with the CFTC to jointly monitor sports wagering activity on prediction markets and safeguard the integrity of their games, the NFL has not. Instead, the league has formal arrangements with sports-betting firms DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming. Nevertheless, NFL executive vice president Jeff Miller told ESPN in March that the agency “values the league’s insights.” Still, given its ties to gambling companies, the NFL obviously has a financial stake in the question; if the states prevail, a stricter regulatory regime for prediction markets could mean less competition for the league’s sportsbook partners.
In September, ahead of the new season, ABC News reported that the NFL dispatched a letter to sports-prediction markets listing prohibitions it wanted platforms to drop. The letter urged markets to stop “offering objectionable bets that threaten the integrity of our games,” such as the outcome of a field goal, a quarterback’s first pass, or the yards a running back might gain on his first carry.
It’s hard to justify what’s objectionable about these wagers, given that the league’s partners, DraftKings and FanDuel, offer comparable bets on future plays or on who will catch a pass on a given drive. The NFL’s aim to curb bets tied to officiating—such as how many penalties will be called in a game—understandably seeks to protect game integrity. If an official’s decisions can be swayed by wagering, the responsibility for discipline and oversight should rest with the NFL itself rather than with the trading platforms.
Sports wagering enjoys immense popularity in the United States, with prediction markets proving especially widespread. The 2026 American Sports Fanship Survey conducted by the Siena Research Institute and St. Bonaventure University’s Jandoli School of Communication found that 15 percent of Americans have used prediction markets to bet on sports. Despite their popularity, these platforms have drawn strong opposition from state and federal lawmakers.
This opposition may stem from federal rules that keep prediction markets outside the taxes and fees levied on traditional sportsbooks at the state level. “It’s grossly unfair to [traditional sportsbooks] to have [prediction markets] offer a product that’s nearly identical to traditional offerings without facing the same taxes and regulations,” says Victor Matheson, an economics and accounting professor at the College of the Holy Cross, in an interview with Reason.
Under federal law, the CFTC is said to have “exclusive jurisdiction over swaps… traded or executed” on prediction markets. Yet in rulings by the 6th and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeals against Kalshi, judges have declined to interpret the federal definition of a swap so broadly as to encompass the sports-event contracts offered by prediction platforms. In an amicus brief filed by 39 states and Washington, D.C., the states argue that the legal uncertainty has left them “at an impasse over who can regulate” prediction markets.
In its August ruling, the 9th Circuit found Kalshi’s argument that its event contracts differ from the typical sportsbook bets “unpersuasive.” Similarly, when it ruled against Kalshi in September, the 6th Circuit held that Kalshi’s sports-event contracts do not “satisfy the statutory definition of a ‘swap’ to fall within the scope of the CFTC’s ‘exclusive jurisdiction.'” Even “assuming Kalshi’s sports-event contracts are swaps for purposes of this analysis,” the court concluded that state gambling laws are “neither expressly nor impliedly preempted” by federal law.
The loss of revenue and the capacity to evade state governance have clearly irked state officials, leaving prediction markets entangled in ongoing lawsuits across around 20 states. On the federal front, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is also examining the agency, spurred by a July letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) accusing the CFTC of being ill-equipped to regulate derivative markets “due to staffing cuts that threaten to weaken its enforcement.”
Warren isn’t alone in her scrutiny; in its response, the GAO notes it received a “related request” to probe the CFTC’s reduced staffing. With the dispute pitting state regulators against a federal agency, federal lawmakers may ultimately need to resolve the jurisdiction question.
The CFTC is “the most efficient regulator of prediction markets,” writes Jacob James Rich, policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason. However, the “threat of future presidential administrations broadening CFTC policy,” coupled with challenges from the states, suggests it may not be the best long-term solution for managing the market.
Kalshi has until November 9 to respond. ESPN reported that the Supreme Court is unlikely to decide whether to take the case “before December at the earliest.” Regardless of the Court’s action, one conclusion stands: lawmakers have little faith that the states’ leadership knows best how to spend their money.
