NFL seeks Supreme Court intervention over sports prediction markets

The NFL has requested the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case regarding whether sports-based prediction contracts should be regulated as gambling. By filing an amicus curiae brief in support of New Jersey regulators in the case Flaherty v. KalshiEX, the league argues that platforms like Kalshi should fall under state gambling oversight rather than being exempt as federal financial derivatives.

The NFL contends that while traditional financial swaps are used to hedge existing risks, sports contracts encourage participants to bet on outcomes where they have no underlying economic interest. The league expressed concerns regarding the integrity of the game, noting that these markets could incentivize the manipulation of specific game moments, such as referee decisions or player injuries.

The scale of the issue is significant; during the first Sunday of the NFL season, prediction markets saw a volume of $3.3 billion, with approximately $2 billion linked to league events. Kalshi maintains that these markets are already regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and that federal oversight provides more consistency than varying state laws.