NFL asks Supreme Court to let states regulate prediction markets

The National Football League has picked a side in the fight over who gets to police prediction markets. On October 8, 2026, the league filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court supporting New Jersey regulators in their challenge to KalshiEX, LLC. The NFL’s core argument is simple. Contracts that let people wager on sports outcomes should be treated as gambling, not as financial swaps under federal oversight. If the justices agree, states could apply their own gambling rules to platforms like Kalshi. What the NFL is actually asking for The NFL’s brief leans heavily on volume. On the first Sunday of the 2026 NFL season, more than $1.8 billion changed hands in NFL-related contracts on prediction markets. That figure made up over half of the $3.3 billion traded across all platforms that day. The brief also flags integrity risks. The NFL argued that some contracts could be manipulated through specific player actions, such as a missed field goal or an injury. When a bet hinges on one person’s single moment, the incentive to tamper with that moment becomes a real concern. Manipulation and insider trading sit at the center of the league’s worries. Those are familiar problems in tradi...