The National Football League has joined forces with tribes, state authorities, former official Gary Gensler, and one of the lawmakers who authored the legislation that prediction markets depend upon—each urging the United States Supreme Court to grant local gambling watchdogs the authority to police these businesses.
In its Thursday submission, the NFL stated that it had previously raised concerns with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which asserts itself as the exclusive regulator of these platforms, regarding how they manage athletic wagers. However, the organization informed the high court that its inquiries went unanswered, resulting in betting protocols that “create genuine threats to contest fairness and consumer protection.” The league was among several entities filing legal briefs this week to support the position of various states that they maintain the legal authority to apply local gaming statutes to emerging prediction networks.
Conversely, Kalshi asserted that it has repeatedly attempted to resolve the matter with the NFL without success.
“We have consistently tried to engage proactively and constructively with the NFL to collaborate on market integrity with no response,” Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana mentioned in an official statement.
The company also highlighted that it has successfully established partnerships with multiple other major sports leagues—such as Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League—making the NFL an outlier. “All but the NFL have been willing to share data and collaborate to protect game integrity,” Diana noted.
The legal foundation supporting sports betting within prediction markets has reached a critical juncture, as one federal court backed Kalshi’s claim that the CFTC should act as its sole regulator, while two other courts supported the view of individual states that athletic wagering falls under local gaming laws and state overseers. The NFL argued in its amicus brief—a filing where an interested party offers its perspective on a legal matter—that this judicial division creates a perilous and ambiguous legal environment.
While New Jersey has formally petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case and deliver a definitive verdict, the CFTC continues to maintain that the exchanges it oversees, which include Kalshi and Polymarket, fall exclusively under its jurisdiction, overriding state powers.
Apart from the NFL, additional figures have voiced opposition to the stance held by the CFTC and Kalshi, including a former senator who helped write the legislation from which the pertinent rules derive—former Senator Chris Dodd of the Dodd-Frank Act. The former Democratic legislator described himself as “uniquely qualified” on the subject and pointed out that his statute “did not set out to authorize nationwide sports betting through derivatives markets or displace decades of state and tribal primacy over gaming regulation.”
Additional criticism came from Gensler, who directed the CFTC when Dodd-Frank was enacted. The former regulator—who later clashed with the cryptocurrency sector during his tenure leading the Securities and Exchange Commission—disputed current CFTC Chairman Mike Selig, arguing that there was never any intention to supersede state-level gambling legislation.
“Congress did not transfer jurisdiction over sports betting from the states to the CFTC,” Gensler wrote in his brief. “When Congress amended the [Commodity Exchange Act] through Dodd-Frank, it was addressing the causes of the recent financial crisis, not undoing federal policy against sports betting and displacing traditional state and tribal regulation.”
The submission from the NFL contended that the CFTC currently fails to hold Kalshi and comparable platforms to standards as stringent as those enforced by states. The federally supervised entities “are not subject to the same rigorous regulatory constructs and oversight provided by state gaming authorities.” Ever since state-regulated football wagering began, the league stated that its primary objective “has been preserving the integrity of its games and protecting its fans as legal sports betting spread state by state.”
According to the league, CFTC oversight falls short across several major areas: it permits wagers that individual players can manipulate; it allows individuals under the age of 21 to place bets; and the federal agency lacks adequate personnel to monitor these markets as effectively as state regulators.
The federal regulatory body pushed back against that assessment on Thursday, stating, “Since day 1, the CFTC has engaged with the NFL regarding the agency’s rulemaking agenda and policy priorities.” The agency’s official statement labeled it “unfortunate” that the NFL chose not to establish an agreement with the commission, “which would’ve provided the league the ability to better discuss, cooperate, and exchange information with us to promote the integrity and resilience of prediction markets.”
Nevertheless, the NFL maintained that the CFTC has maintained a “more laissez-faire approach” than state authorities, prompting the league to urge the Supreme Court to intervene promptly.
“Billions of dollars will be bet on NFL games through prediction markets each season, and any delay from the court will result in increasing consumer harm and risk to game integrity,” the organization declared in its filing.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/10/08/nfl-joins-pushback-against-prediction-markets-as-u-s-supreme-court-asked-to-act.
