NFL Urges SCOTUS to Hear Prediction Market Case — SkimNews
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- NFL filed an amicus brief Thursday supporting New Jersey's September petition asking SCOTUS to decide whether prediction markets' sports-event contracts fall under state gambling law
- The 3rd Circuit barred New Jersey from enforcing gambling laws against Kalshi, while the 9th Circuit ruled in Nevada that sports contracts fall under state law — leaving SCOTUS to resolve the split
- 39 state attorneys general and D.C. filed their own amicus brief Wednesday backing New Jersey; Kalshi has until Nov. 9 to respond, and SCOTUS is unlikely to decide on cert until December at earliest
- The league flagged that $1.8 billion of $3.3 billion in prediction-market trading volume on the first Sunday of the 2026 NFL season was tied to its games
- NFL objects to markets tied to officiating and easily-manipulated single-person contracts, saying multiple letters to the CFTC flagging those have gone unaddressed
- CFTC public affairs director Brooke Nethercott pushed back, saying the NFL declined to sign an MOU that would have allowed better information-sharing, calling the decision "unfortunate"
- State gambling regulators have hundreds of employees each, while the CFTC has only 543 total employees overseeing the entire country, per the NFL's brief
Why it matters: The NFL is leveraging its outsized role in prediction-market trading — $1.8B of $3.3B on opening Sunday — to argue state regulators, not the under-resourced CFTC, should police sports contracts. A SCOTUS decision would settle whether a 543-employee federal agency or state gambling bodies with hundreds of staff each get the final say over a multi-billion-dollar market.
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