The National Football League has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take New Jersey’s challenge to Kalshi, arguing that sports-event contracts are gambling products that should remain subject to state regulation rather than exclusively federal oversight.
In an amicus brief filed Oct. 8, the league said preserving the integrity of its games was its highest priority. It argued that sports-related contracts do not function as financial swaps and that regulation of gambling has traditionally been a state police power.
The NFL said it does not oppose prediction markets outright. But it wants sports contracts subject to safeguards that it says are missing from current platforms, including a minimum betting age of 21 and bans on proposition-style markets that could be manipulated or informed by insiders.
The league specifically identified contracts on missed field goals, fumbles, injuries and officiating decisions as potential risks. It said a player or other participant could influence an outcome, or possess material nonpublic information about it. State-regulated sportsbooks and gaming authorities use measures such as restrictions on manipulable bets, information-sharing agreements and monitoring for insider trading, the brief said.
Kalshi permits customers aged 18 and older, while most states set 21 as the minimum age for sports betting. The NFL told CNBC that neither the Commodity Futures Trading Commission nor prediction-market companies had adopted a 21-and-over limit or prohibited categories of bets susceptible to manipulation, despite the league’s requests.
The scale of football trading featured prominently in the filing. NFL-related contracts accounted for $1.8 billion of the $3.3 billion traded across prediction markets on the first Sunday of the NFL season, according to the league’s brief.
As we reported in September, New Jersey asked the Supreme Court to resolve whether federal commodities law displaces state gambling rules for sports contracts offered on CFTC-registered exchanges. The Third Circuit ruled April 6 that Kalshi’s contracts were swaps traded on a designated contract market and that the Commodity Exchange Act preempted New Jersey law, affirming an injunction that stopped the state’s gaming enforcement division from acting against the company.
The NFL said that ruling conflicts with decisions by the Sixth and Ninth Circuits on whether Kalshi’s sports-event contracts meet the statutory definition of a swap. Kalshi and other designated contract markets maintain that federal law shields their sports contracts from state sports-betting restrictions.
The dispute has drawn broader state support. In May, a bipartisan group of 41 attorneys general asked the CFTC to confirm through rulemaking that it lacks jurisdiction over sports-related contracts and that states can regulate or prohibit sports gambling. The coalition argued that the products are used for entertainment wagering, rather than financial risk management.
The NFL cited the CFTC’s resource constraints in advocating for state oversight. It said 39 states and the District of Columbia had legalized sports betting in some form, while state gaming regulators have developed protections tailored to wagering markets.
