NBA Strikes Deals With Prediction Markets

The NBA has struck deals that will make Kalshi and Polymarket the league's preferred prediction markets, along with an agreement with a federal agency tasked with regulating those exchanges. Those agreements, announced Monday, are intended to provide "significant integrity protections for NBA-related markets," including limitations on what can be offered on those exchanges, transparency when it comes to suspicious patterns by site users, and banning league and team personnel from making trades related to league events, the AP reports. The terms of the NBA's agreements with Kalshi and Polymarket were not disclosed, other than the league confirming that they are for multiple years.

The prediction markets will have "information-sharing obligations relating to investigations and suspicious trading," the NBA said. The NBA has had similar guardrails in place with its sportsbook partners for some time and has cited instances where that system has flagged irregularities in betting patterns.

• "If you're going to be betting on our games or trading on our games or playing fantasy around our games, it's better for it to be regulated than unregulated," said Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA's head of media distribution and partnerships.
• Kalshi and Polymarket, as part of their partnerships with the NBA, will now be able to describe themselves as the "Preferred Prediction Market Exchange of the NBA," plus have access to league intellectual property such as logos, be able to get NBA statistical data from league partner Sportradar "to operate and settle authorized NBA-related markets," and other marketing activations.

• The NBA is also expanding its agreements with current official sports betting partners, such as DraftKings, to include their prediction-market offerings. Not all states offer legalized sports betting but prediction markets—at least on some level—are essentially available in all 50 states.
• More than a dozen states are involved in litigation over prediction markets and earlier this month the NFL asked the Supreme Court to rule on the regulation of such markets. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission contends that it has exclusive jurisdiction on oversight, though some states believe it should fall under their purview. Kaufman-Ross tells ESPN that the NBA doesn't plan to weigh in on the case. "We'll let the courts decide," he says. "The jurisdictional issue is not our issue. Our issue is the way that our game is impacted."