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NFL Urges Supreme Court to Let States Regulate Prediction Markets

8 sources · updated 2026-10-09
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What happened

The National Football League filed an amicus brief supporting New Jersey’s petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether states may regulate sports-related prediction markets or whether the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusive jurisdiction. New Jersey petitioned the Court last month after federal appeals courts split: the 6th and 9th Circuits allowed states to enforce their gambling laws against prediction-market operators, while the 3rd Circuit sided with Kalshi, which argues its event contracts are federally regulated financial instruments rather than wagers. In its brief, the NFL argues those sports contracts are gambling under states’ traditional police powers and said football accounted for $1.8 billion of $3.3 billion in prediction-market trading on the first Sunday of the NFL season; Ohio separately filed in support of New Jersey with backing from a bipartisan group of 38 states. Kalshi and Polymarket say the CFTC is already policing sports-related event contracts and that ongoing federal rulemaking addresses integrity concerns. The NHL, MLB, MLS, and UFC have partnerships with Kalshi or Polymarket, while the NFL, NBA, and PGA have not.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 4 articles

4 of 4 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report. Kalshi denied part of it on the record.

What these terms mean and how they're counted
On the record · names a source 4 of 4
On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: NFL, National Football League, New York Post, Polymarket, Ohio and Kalshi spokesperson
Primary evidence · cites a document or data 4 of 4
Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: amicus brief, brief, petition
Credits another outlet 0 of 4
The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Each article presents its own reporting.
Unnamed sources 1 of 4
The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
On-record denial 1
A named person or institution says the claim, or part of it, is not true. It is on the record — someone signed their name to it — but it is not confirmation, so it never counts toward On the record. Criticizing or dissenting from a decision is not a denial. The count is how many people or institutions deny it; each is listed with the first article that carried the denial. Here: Kalshi (ABC News, Oct 8, 19:46 UTC)
How it developed
When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Oct 8, 16:42 UTC by New York Post, naming its source. First document in the first report, from New York Post (amicus brief).
Not counted 0
Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out

Unpacked

Right-leaning coverage tells readers the Supreme Court fight would decide whether prediction markets can keep offering sports wagers in states that already prohibit traditional sports betting. Left-leaning coverage never states that stake. The Daily Caller names that prohibition-state stake outright in its account of the brief. ABC News frames the case as a fight over regulatory authority and game integrity, with no mention of wagers in prohibition states. Right-leaning coverage, including the New York Post, labels the platforms "gambling apps." Left-leaning coverage does not, treating them instead as event contracts already sitting under federal commodities rules and a pending rewrite. None of the coverage says what share of prediction-market volume comes from states that ban sports betting.
Bottom line

ABC News never mentions that prediction markets already take sports bets where sportsbooks are illegal; the Daily Caller does, and that is the switch the NFL brief is trying to flip.

The receipts — 3 facts one side's coverage lacks
  • New Jersey's challenge is backed by dozens of Native tribes and the casino industry contextin New York Post · absent from left-leaning coverage
  • The CFTC has 543 employees numberin ABC News · absent from right-leaning coverage
  • Roughly 20 states are involved in litigation over prediction markets numberin ABC News · absent from right-leaning coverage
The Left View
Left-leaning coverage frames the fight as one only the Supreme Court can settle, repeating the warning that lower judges are “hopelessly confused and divided” and underscoring bipartisan attorneys general who say regulating gambling is among states’ “sovereign police powers.” These accounts center the NFL’s integrity warnings—contracts on missed field goals, intentional fumbles, injuries, and officiating that insiders “could know in advance”—and the league’s charge that neither the CFTC nor the platforms have, “despite our persistent urging,” banned those categories or set a 21-year age limit. They also give substantial space to Kalshi’s rebuttal that CFTC rulemaking “will address many of the NFL’s concerns” and that the agency “has the ability to police sports-related event contract markets,” and they note the NFL’s own statement that it is not opposed to prediction markets but believes, “given the current resource constraints of the CFTC, this is a job better left to the states.”
The Right View
Right-leaning coverage casts Kalshi and similar platforms as sportsbooks operating “under the guise of federally regulated financial exchanges,” calling CFTC registration a “loophole” used to “evade gambling taxes and penalties” and to allow 18-year-olds to bet. These sources present the NFL brief as an attempt to stop operators from “exploiting the gap between state and federal regulation, endangering consumers and the integrity of sports events,” and they add a public-health frame: problem rates among sports bettors “at least twice those of gamblers overall,” nearly 20 percent of online sports bettors reaching clinical addiction, and a former student who lost more than $12,000 on Kalshi after traditional sports betting was prohibited in Utah. They also treat insider-trading incidents on the platforms—including Kalshi’s lifetime ban of former Rep. George Santos and federal charges against an Army officer accused of making $400,000 on Polymarket using classified information—as evidence that federal-only oversight has not contained abuse.
Our Take (balanced)
The states’ and NFL’s strongest argument is legal and practical: gambling is a traditional state police power, two circuits have already let states enforce it against these markets, and the league’s specific requests—an age-21 floor and bans on easily manipulated prop-style contracts—have not been adopted even as football already made up more than half of that $1.8 billion Sunday of trading. The platforms’ strongest reply, aired across the coverage, is that event contracts already sit inside the CFTC’s commodities regime, that forthcoming federal rules rest on “the same comprehensive system of federal enforcement that protects trillions of dollars of transactions in U.S. markets,” and that a “harmonized federal framework” would be more consistent than “a patchwork of disconnected state laws.” The unresolved tension is whether sports event contracts are financial derivatives the Commodity Exchange Act occupies nationwide, or sports wagers Congress has not clearly displaced—and thus whether exclusive federal jurisdiction is a coherent national market design or a workaround around state betting laws.

8 sources

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