NBA signs MOU with CFTC and partners with prediction markets

The NBA has become the latest major US sports league to foray into prediction markets, according to a Monday release that announced a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and named Kalshi and Polymarket as the league’s “Preferred Prediction Market Exchanges”.

Integrity protections for NBA-related contract markets were a key concern for the league, which kicked off its 82nd season last week. The partnership agreements with Kalshi and Polymarket establish “significant integrity protections”, including “limitations on permissible markets, affirmative prohibitions on trading NBA event contracts by league and team personnel, and information-sharing obligations relating to investigations and suspicious trading,” the NBA’s statement said.

As preferred partners, Kalshi and Polymarket will receive access to NBA IP, marketing rights in the US and official data feeds from Sportradar, the league’s data distribution partner. Notably, the NBA also said it is expanding its existing partnership with DraftKings “to include prediction markets and nationwide promotion”. Expanded partnerships with the NBA’s other existing sports betting partners are expected to be announced “in the coming weeks”, the release said.

These expanded partnerships will include additional prediction-specific integrity obligations that are consistent with the league’s “latest sports betting restrictions”, which is a reference to a series of betting market prohibitions that the NBA outlined for its sports betting partners prior to the start of the season.

Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA’s head of media distribution and partnerships, said in a statement that protecting league integrity was its “top priority”. Forging prediction market partnerships and establishing the MOU with the CFTC were important steps in “establishing a framework that creates new opportunities to engage our fans”, he said.

NBA latest league with prediction deal

Over the last year, several major US leagues and events have joined forces with prediction market operators. Polymarket is partnered with MLB, the UFC and MLS, while Kalshi and Polymarket share partnerships with the NHL and now the NBA. Monday is a rare “sports equinox”, in which all four major leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL — are active on the same day.

Prior to the NBA’s official announcement, multiple high-profile players had already signed individual endorsement deals with the platforms.

Miami Heat forward and two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo announced a deal with Kalshi in February and LeBron James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and most recognisable active player, appeared in a star-studded Polymarket ad in September. James, who is playing his NBA-record 24th season with the Philadelphia 76ers this year, was previously partnered with DraftKings.

In a statement, Kalshi’s Head of Sports Partnerships Adam Barrick called the partnership with the NBA a “significant milestone”, while emphasising that the company is committed to ensuring markets are “fair, safe, and open”. Ari Borod, Polymarket’s president of sports business development, said his team will work with the NBA to establish a “safe, transparent prediction market ecosystem for everyone”.

Both executives previously worked in the sports betting industry — Barrick spent more than six years at DraftKings while Borod’s career includes stops at FanDuel, Action Network and Fanatics.

MOU details

The five-page MOU between the NBA and CFTC outlines a working relationship between the two parties and is concerned mainly with information sharing.

But while the document details a commitment to “discuss, cooperate, and exchange information concerning issues of common interest”, it is not legally binding and “does not require either Party to create or maintain information or to provide or share information with the other Party”. Any information that is shared, it says, will be at the “sole discretion” of each party.

“It is anticipated that cooperation will be achieved primarily through ongoing, informal consultations, as well as periodic meetings, written requests as needed, and other practical arrangements as may be developed by the Parties,” the MOU says.

CFTC General Counsel Tyle Badgley and NBA Executive Vice President Dan Spillane are listed as the parties’ points of contact.

In a statement, CFTC Chair Michael Selig called the MOU a “responsible step toward protecting sports integrity and market participants from abuses in prediction markets like insider trading and fraud”. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is not quoted in any of the statements released Monday.

Silver is something of a pioneer with regard to gambling, having advocated for legal sports betting beginning in 2014, long before the activity became legal in dozens of US states. That said, he has since come to lament this patchwork state-by-state regulatory system and the difficulties it creates in sharing information and pursuing investigations.

Silver’s concerns addressed?

The NBA has been rocked by multiple high-profile gambling scandals in recent years. Former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter received the league’s first-ever lifetime ban for gambling-related offences in 2024, and multiple other players are currently ensnared in legal trouble, including Terry Rozier and Malik Beasley. All of the violations were unearthed by integrity monitors and aided by various state gambling regulators.

In response to these integrity issues, the NBA forbade its sports betting partners from offering certain markets this season, including tip-off winners, bets on specific shots and “under” props for players expected to play less than 12 minutes in a given game. The league has the authority to restrict the markets its betting partners offer, per ESPN, and the same goes for the new prediction market agreements, according to security consultant Matthew Wein.

At the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas this summer, Silver told iGB that the league has “remarkably little control” over its IP, which the new partnerships and MOU would seem to quell. He also said state-level regulation “puts the league in a difficult position”, and a federal-level “czar or commissioner” would be “very helpful” for integrity matters.

Ironically, the CFTC is a federal regulator with Selig as the lone sitting commissioner. There are ample concerns, however, as to how effective the agency can be in policing prediction markets in addition to the multitrillion-dollar derivative and swap industries also in its remit.

Matt Rybaltowski contributed to this report.