The NFL has picked a side in the fight over sports prediction markets, and it isn't Kalshi's.
In an amicus brief filed Thursday, the league urged the Supreme Court to take up New Jersey's appeal of a Third Circuit ruling. That ruling found Kalshi's sports event contracts are "swaps" under the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction, shielding them from state gambling laws.
The Sixth and Ninth Circuits have ruled the opposite way, creating a split only the high court can resolve. Kalshi and prediction market rivals such as Polymarket have long faced pushback from state regulators. (Disclosure: Decrypt's parent company Dastan operates Myriad, a prediction market unavailable to U.S. residents.)
The NFL in its brief sided with the Sixth and Ninth Circuits. It argued that Dodd-Frank's definition of a swap covers instruments that hedge existing risk, not bets that create new risk, which means sports contracts belong under state gambling oversight.
The brief lays out the league's grievances in detail. The NFL said it asked the CFTC and operators like Kalshi to ban contracts that one person could easily manipulate, that involve injuries or officiating, or whose outcomes are knowable in advance, but they declined.
It noted that 18-year-olds can trade on Kalshi while most states require sports bettors to be 21, and that the CFTC has just 543 employees nationwide, suggesting the agency is understaffed to handle the task of policing these markets. Without league-specific lists of prohibited bettors, operators' "nominal insider-trading policies or prohibitions are paper tigers," the brief says.
NFL-related contracts accounted for $1.8 billion of the $3.3 billion traded across prediction markets on the season's first Sunday, according to the brief. The league, represented by former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, wants a ruling before the 2027 season.
It isn't asking for prediction markets to disappear, though. If the justices side with the Third Circuit, the NFL said it would redouble efforts to persuade the CFTC, operators, and Congress to adopt stronger integrity and consumer protections before then.
Sports gaming attorney Daniel Wallach said the brief "meaningfully increases the chances of a cert grant," in a post on X.
"It is extremely telling that the sports league which has most forcefully advocated for federal regulation is essentially saying 'this ain't it,'" he wrote on X. Wallach noted that former CFTC and SEC Chair Gary Gensler and former Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., both of whom helped pass Dodd-Frank, also filed briefs backing New Jersey.
Other leagues have taken a friendlier approach. MLB named Polymarket its exclusive prediction market sponsor in March and signed an integrity agreement with the CFTC, and the NHL became the first major league to license its trademarks to prediction markets. DraftKings and FanDuel have launched prediction markets of their own.
