NFL Bars the Bets the CFTC Wants Restricted
The National Football League announced commercial agreements with Draftkings, Fanduel, and Fanatics Betting and Gaming on Aug. 27, restoring a sponsorship category that had sat empty since the end of March. All three signed multi-year deals granting rights to league marks, presence at the Super Bowl and NFL Draft, and access to real-time play-by-play data, Next Gen Stats, and BetVision through Genius Sports. Financial terms were not disclosed.
All three partners agreed to the league’s core game integrity policies and to work together “to prohibit wagers the league finds objectionable, including bets tied to officiating and injuries, along with those that can be known in advance or easily manipulated by a single person.” Renie Anderson, the league’s executive vice president and chief revenue officer, said the three “share our vision for innovation and fan engagement, but most importantly, our commitment to protecting the integrity of the game.”
That list closely tracks the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s proposed rules for prediction markets. The commission’s June 10 notice of proposed rulemaking would permit standard sports contracts – game winners, championship futures, and the bulk of what currently trades – as serving the public interest. Contracts on player injuries, officiating outcomes, discrete in-game actions such as a specific pitch or shot by a named player, physical altercations, and pre-collegiate sports would be banned.
Asked about the prediction-markets category, Anderson told ESPN: “That’s not a space that we’re considering right now commercially.” Draftkings, Fanduel, and Fanatics all run prediction-market products, but the data and intellectual property rights in the new deals do not extend to them, Front Office Sports reported.
The league has been talking to Kalshi, Polymarket, and the CFTC for months without result, and no deals will be in place when the season opens Sept. 9, sources told the outlet. “I don’t see a scenario where the NFL is ready by the start of the season,” one prediction-market industry source said. “I would be incredibly shocked if anything at all happens this season.”
A source familiar with the league’s thinking told FOS the NFL has been lobbying the commission to adopt rules that mirror the integrity and consumer protections in legalized sports betting, and that it is alarmed by markets related to injuries, which it considers “easily manipulable and offensive” to players. In July, the league told the CFTC its proposal falls significantly short on integrity, consumer protection, and manipulation. Anderson also told ESPN that “in order to advertise in our game, you also have to have official data, because you have to agree to our integrity requirements.”
Kalshi lists no market explicitly tied to an injury, but it does offer contracts on whether a given player will compete – including whether Patrick Mahomes, who tore an anterior cruciate ligament in December, will play in Week 1. Polymarket US self-certified a near-identical product on Aug. 25 and withdrew it the following day. Both exchanges hold seats on the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee, as does Draftkings chief executive Jason Robins.
The league’s previous five-year agreements with Fanduel, Draftkings, and Caesars, which were worth close to $1 billion combined, expired on March 31 after talks with the two largest partners stalled over a price increase for official streaming data distributed through Genius Sports. Genius remains the league’s exclusive data distribution partner under the new deals, and provides the real-time betting-pattern monitoring the league cites in its integrity program.
The NHL partnered with both Kalshi and Polymarket last October, and MLB reached a deal with Polymarket in March, with individual clubs following. Individual NFL franchises have inquired about their own arrangements, according to a source at a prediction-market company who told Front Office Sports that “everybody wants a partner in this space,” but no team-level deals would currently be permitted.
