The NFL confirmed this week it will have zero prediction-market deals in place when the regular season opens September 9, even after months of talks with Kalshi, Polymarket and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. [1] "I don't see a scenario where the NFL is ready by the start of the season," one prediction-market industry source told Front Office Sports. "I would be incredibly shocked if anything at all happens this season." [1]
The refusal is deliberate rather than merely slow. A source familiar with the league's thinking told Front Office Sports the NFL is specifically "alarmed" about prediction markets tied to player injuries and participation — contracts letting users bet on whether an injured player, such as Patrick Mahomes following his December ACL tear, will play in a given week. [1] Such markets are "easily manipulable and offensive" to players, the source said, which is "why they are included in the league's prohibited bet categories." [1] Kalshi does not currently list markets explicitly framed around injuries but does offer contracts on whether specific players will compete in a given week; Polymarket filed similar player-participation markets with the CFTC and withdrew them a day after certification. [1] NFL revenue chief Renie Anderson told ESPN prediction markets are simply "not a space that we're considering right now commercially," a framing distinct from the injury-integrity concern the league gave Front Office Sports the same week. [2]
That institutional caution sits against a live market this weekend that does not share it. The 2026 preseason runs through Saturday, its final slate before the regular season, and third-party prediction-market promotional content is everywhere around it regardless of whether the league has a deal in place: sportsbook-adjacent outlets have spent recent days publishing Kalshi and Polymarket promo-code guides timed explicitly to the season's opening weeks, offering signup bonuses for trading NFL win totals, player props and game outcomes on platforms the league has pointedly declined to partner with. [3] None of that trading requires the NFL's permission or participation — Kalshi and Polymarket list NFL-linked contracts as federally regulated derivatives, a structure that lets them operate without a league licensing deal the way DraftKings and FanDuel's sportsbook partnerships require.
The league's posture also lags its peers. The NHL partnered with both Kalshi and Polymarket last October, and individual teams have since struck their own deals — the Blackhawks with Kalshi, the Rangers with Polymarket. MLB reached a Polymarket deal in March, and nearly a quarter of its teams now hold individual prediction-market partnerships, including the Yankees with Polymarket and the Giants, Braves, Padres, Red Sox and Dodgers with Kalshi. [1] The NBA has been in talks with both platforms for months and is expected to reach deals before the NFL does. [1] Individual NFL franchises have inquired about their own team-level deals, sources told Front Office Sports, but none would currently be allowed under the league's posture. [1]
Meanwhile, the NFL on Thursday announced multi-year sportsbook renewals with DraftKings and FanDuel and a new deal with Fanatics — the traditional wagering apparatus the league is comfortable regulating directly, because the data and integrity terms in those contracts do not extend to the same companies' separate prediction-market products. [2] The distinction the league is drawing — sports betting yes, prediction markets not yet — is coherent on paper. It is also increasingly cosmetic in practice: DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics all operate prediction-market arms the NFL's own sportsbook deals do not touch, and fans placing bets on this weekend's preseason finale through those same companies' prediction platforms are trading on exactly the games the league says it is not yet ready to formally engage with.
The NFL's holdout is a real institutional choice, grounded in a specific and defensible integrity concern about injury-adjacent markets other leagues have not fully resolved either. But a fan opening a prediction app this weekend encounters an NFL market that functions identically whether or not the league has signed anything — the games are the same games, the outcomes are the same outcomes, and the money moves regardless of what the league's own commercial posture says it is ready for.
-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos