Overview
- The NBA announced Monday, Oct. 26 that it has signed commercial deals making Kalshi and Polymarket its preferred prediction‑market partners and has entered a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
- Under the agreements the two platforms gain rights to use NBA intellectual property and receive official game data from Sportradar to run and settle authorized markets.
- The contracts create an integrity regime that bans league and team personnel from trading NBA event contracts, lets the league restrict which markets can be offered, and requires platforms to report suspicious trading to the NBA and regulators.
- The NBA also expanded its deal with DraftKings to cover prediction markets, while state attorneys general and several lawsuits challenge whether prediction markets are subject to state gambling laws or federal CFTC rules and the NFL has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.
- The pairing of league control, data access and a CFTC MOU raises the chance of a single federal regime for prediction markets and creates immediate business and reputational stakes for players, teams, operators and state regulators.