The National Football League has entered the escalating legal fight over prediction markets, filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket should be policed by state gambling regulators rather than federal authorities, as the case moves toward what could be a definitive ruling.

Prediction markets let users trade event contracts whose payouts hinge on real-world outcomes, including sports results — products the platforms structure as financial derivatives rather than bets, a distinction that sits at the heart of the jurisdictional dispute.

The league's filing was one of several submitted to the high court this week. Others came from former regulator Gary Gensler and former Senator Chris Dodd, a sponsor of the legislation on which the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has anchored its claim that it should serve as the sole watchdog for prediction markets.

With the filing, the NFL aligned itself with Native American tribes, state governments, Gensler and even one of the lawmakers who helped write the law the prediction market operators rely on — all of them urging the Supreme Court to let local gambling regulators oversee the companies.

NFL says its concerns went unanswered

In its Thursday filing, the NFL said it had raised concerns with the CFTC — which claims the role of sole regulator of these platforms — about how they conduct sports wagers. The league told the high court that its requests have not been answered, leaving betting practices that “pose real challenges to game integrity and consumer protection.”

The NFL was among the many parties filing legal briefs this week in support of the states' argument that they have the right to impose local gambling laws on the emerging prediction markets.

Kalshi, for its part, said it has repeatedly tried to work through the issue with the league 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 said in a statement.

The company also pointed out that it has secured multiple partnerships with other professional sports leagues — including Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League — and that the NFL is standing apart. “All but the NFL have been willing to share data and collaborate to protect game integrity,” Diana said.

A legal crossroads

The legal authority underpinning sports wagers on prediction markets has reached a crossroads: one federal court has backed Kalshi's argument that the CFTC should be its sole regulator, while two others have sided with the states' position that sports betting belongs under the authority of their own gambling laws and regulators.

The NFL suggested in its legal filing — known as an amicus brief, in which an interested party shares its opinion in a case — that the divided rulings leave an uncertain and hazardous legal terrain.

The state-by-state betting landscape the league wants to preserve dates to a 2018 Supreme Court decision that struck down the federal prohibition on sports betting, leaving legalization and oversight to individual states.

New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to take the case and issue a definitive ruling. The CFTC, meanwhile, continues to insist that the exchanges it regulates, including Kalshi and Polymarket, are under its exclusive authority, which preempts state powers. Whether the justices agree to hear the case is the next procedural step, and it will help determine whether the rules for sports contracts on prediction markets are settled nationwide or continue to differ by jurisdiction.

Dodd and Gensler weigh in

Beyond the NFL, other prominent voices have joined in opposition to the positions of the CFTC and Kalshi, including a former senator who was one of the authors of the law from which the relevant regulations spring: Chris Dodd of the Dodd-Frank Act. Enacted in 2010 in response to the global financial crisis, Dodd-Frank amended the Commodity Exchange Act, the federal statute under which the CFTC asserts authority over these markets. The former Democratic senator called himself “uniquely qualified” on the topic and said in his brief that his bill “did not set out to authorize nationwide sports betting through derivatives markets or displace decades of state and tribal primacy over gaming regulation.”

Another critic is Gensler, who ran the CFTC when Dodd-Frank was implemented. The former regulator — who also ran afoul of the crypto industry when he later led the Securities and Exchange Commission — contradicted the CFTC's current chairman, Mike Selig, arguing there was never an intention to override state gambling laws.

“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.”

NFL: CFTC standards fall short of the states

The NFL's brief insisted that the CFTC is not currently holding Kalshi and other companies to standards as tough as those applied by the states. The federally regulated firms “are not subject to the same rigorous regulatory constructs and oversight provided by state gaming authorities,” the league said.

Since the onset of state-regulated betting on football, the league said its top priority “has been preserving the integrity of its games and protecting its fans as legal sports betting spread state by state.”

The league argued that CFTC oversight is failing on several key points: it allows wagering that can be manipulated by the choices of single players; it lets people younger than 21 bet; and the federal agency does not have enough staff to police the markets as well as the states do.

The federal agency countered that view on Thursday, saying, “Since day 1, the CFTC has engaged with the NFL regarding the agency's rulemaking agenda and policy priorities.” The CFTC's statement called it “unfortunate” that the NFL chose not to secure an arrangement with the agency “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.”

The NFL, however, that the CFTC has “stuck to a more laissez-faire approach” than the states, and it asked the Supreme Court to take up the case quickly.

“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 league said in its brief.

Source: CoinDesk