NBA Names Kalshi and Polymarket Preferred Prediction Markets and Signs CFTC Memorandum

The NBA has named Kalshi and Polymarket as its preferred prediction-market exchanges and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the league announced on Monday. Each platform receives rights to NBA intellectual property, marketing and promotional activations across US media, plus official NBA data from Sportradar to operate and settle authorised markets. The deal does not cover the WNBA. The league has also expanded its existing DraftKings agreement to include prediction markets and nationwide promotion, and says it will add other partners in the coming weeks.

The integrity terms deserve a closer read. The agreements limit which markets may be permitted, prohibit league and team personnel from trading event contracts, and provide for information-sharing on investigations and suspicious trading. Those rules bind people inside the game. The coverage available does not say how compliance will be audited or enforced, and it does not disclose any financial terms.

The larger risk sits in the courts. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport has petitioned the US Supreme Court to overturn a Third Circuit ruling that barred the state from enforcing its gambling laws. The NFL, which remains opposed to sports-event contracts, has backed New Jersey's regulator in an amicus brief. NBA head of media distribution and partnerships Scott Kaufman-Ross told ESPN that "the jurisdictional issue is not our issue," and that the league will not weigh in on the case. He said the contracts already address the possibility that sports-event contracts stop being available.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig welcomed the memorandum as part of a push for more data sharing between the agency and leagues, calling the NBA's step a "responsible" one. That is the regulator's own characterisation. It is not an independent review of how the integrity terms will work, and an information-sharing agreement does not by itself settle which government has authority over these contracts.

Analysis: the NBA is committing to the category while declining to take a position on whether it will remain legal in every state. That is a rational commercial choice, but it leaves the league's integrity rules dependent on a market whose legal status other parties are still litigating. If courts narrow access, the people most exposed are likely to be fans and partners in the states that lose the products, not the league, which has already drafted for that outcome. The NBA joins the NHL and MLB, which previously signed with the same two exchanges, so the test will be whether these rulebooks are enforced once the contracts are in use.