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NFL urges Supreme Court to back states in sports prediction market fight
The league says the contracts should fall under CFTC swap rules only if used to hedge existing risk, not to create new risk, and argues they are vulnerable to easy manipulation.
The NFL has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to resolve a split over whether states can regulate sports prediction market contracts as gambling, rather than as federally overseen swaps, according to Decrypt.
In the brief, the NFL backs New Jersey’s appeal of a Third Circuit decision that treated Kalshi’s sports event contracts as “swaps” under the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction, and it notes that the Sixth and Ninth Circuits ruled the opposite way, creating an inconsistency across federal appeals courts.
The NFL argues that under the Dodd-Frank definition, swap coverage is aimed at instruments used to hedge existing risk, not bets that create new risk, which it says is why sports contracts should remain subject to state gambling oversight.
The league also lays out concerns that regulators and operators should ban certain sports contracts, including those it says could be easily manipulated, those tied to injuries or officiating, and those whose outcomes are knowable in advance, the NFL brief states in the account described by Decrypt.