Oct 26, 2026, 11:59 a.m. EDT
2 min read
Summary
- The National Basketball Association has become the newest American professional sports league to secure an information-sharing pact with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission concerning its involvement with prediction markets.
- Simultaneously, much like other leagues, it revealed an alliance with Kalshi and Polymarket as its designated preferred exchanges.
- Even though baseball and hockey organizations previously reached similar agreements, the National Football League has explicitly turned them down, aligning itself with individual states asserting that regional gambling regulations ought to govern such wagering.
The National Basketball Association has finalized a prediction markets accord with the federal derivatives watchdog while also executing a partnership involving leading platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, formally integrating professional basketball into the online wagering trend even as another prominent organization, the National Football League, has declined such a deal.
Like Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League before it, the NBA formed a data-sharing memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which administers federal supervision over exchanges handling event contracts—the basic binary yes-or-no wagers driving most sports betting. The Monday announcement noted that the NBA’s pact incorporates limitations designed to safeguard the integrity of such gambling.
At the same time, mirroring other sports organizations, the NBA collaborated with the premier platforms, designating them as preferred exchanges.
Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA’s head of media distribution and partnerships, stated, “As this category develops, we believe it is important to work constructively with regulators and operators to help ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place.” He added, “These partnerships represent an important step in establishing a framework that creates new opportunities to engage our fans.”
These agreements emerge as prediction markets encounter a nationwide legal conflict against multiple state governments that argue such betting falls more properly under the authority of regional gambling statutes. Three key federal judicial rulings have landed on both sides of the matter, with two supporting the position of the states. The U.S. Supreme Court has been urged to intervene and settle the controversy, including via a filing from the NFL, which backed the states in a submission to the highest court.
The NFL argued that the CFTC’s federal oversight has been inadequately staffed and lax, noting that the expanding industry’s platforms “are not subject to the same rigorous regulatory constructs and oversight provided by state gaming authorities.”
Mike Selig, the CFTC chairman who has aggressively pushed to advance the sector across multiple fronts—including legal battles against states, novel regulations, and these information pacts—described the NBA’s choice as “a responsible step toward protecting sports integrity and market participants from abuses in prediction markets like insider trading and fraud.”
In a Monday statement published on its website, Kalshi announced that the exchange and the NBA will “share integrity data, report suspicious trading, and cooperate on investigations,” noting further that the agreement “includes restrictions on permissible markets and explicit prohibitions on league and team personnel trading NBA event contracts, reinforcing our rules against insider trading and manipulation.”
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/10/26/nba-joins-pro-sports-leagues-on-cftc-prediction-markets-bandwagon-while-nfl-balks.
