The National Basketball Association has reached multi-year partnership agreements with prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, designating both companies as the league’s preferred prediction market trading platforms. Under the terms of the announcements, the platforms gain rights to utilize NBA intellectual property, including league logos for marketing and promotional campaigns across various media channels. Additionally, both companies will receive official game data distributed by Sportradar, the league’s official data distribution partner, to operate and settle authorized NBA-related prediction markets.
Prediction markets allow users to trade contracts on the outcomes of future events, such as whether a specific team will win a game or if a match will yield a particular result. Contract prices fluctuate according to market participants’ assessments of event probabilities, combining informational attributes with financial risk. As prediction platforms grow rapidly, sports have emerged as a significant sector for these transactions. To manage associated risks, the NBA’s agreements incorporate multiple integrity protections. The league will restrict which game contracts platforms can offer and retain approval rights over market types. Furthermore, platforms must share investigation and suspicious transaction data with the league to help identify potential insider trading, market manipulation, or other violations.
The agreements explicitly prohibit NBA league and team personnel from trading NBA-related contracts, a restriction designed to mitigate the risk that individuals with access to non-public information—such as player health or game scheduling—might exploit an advantage. Concurrently, the NBA signed a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission focused on regulatory cooperation and information sharing. This mechanism is intended to facilitate communication and investigations when unusual activity arises in NBA-related prediction markets. The CFTC regulates federal derivatives and futures markets, while an ongoing legal debate centers on whether prediction markets should fall under federal financial derivatives rules or state gambling laws.
Traditional sports betting in the United States remains subject to state-level regulations that vary by jurisdiction, whereas prediction market platforms contend that their federally regulated event contracts permit multi-state operations. Numerous states have challenged this view, arguing that certain sports prediction products resemble gambling and should adhere to state gaming oversight. More than a dozen states are currently embroiled in legal disputes regarding prediction market authority, and the National League Football recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review regulatory questions regarding sports contracts. Meanwhile, the CFTC maintains federal regulatory authority over these markets.
By establishing formal partnerships, the NBA aims to help shape rules for this emerging sector rather than relying entirely on external oversight. Scott Kaufman-Ross, the league’s head of media distribution and partnerships, noted that collaborating with regulators and operators helps ensure safeguards are implemented while creating new engagement avenues for fans. Alongside the Kalshi and Polymarket agreements, the NBA expanded its partnership with traditional sports betting operator DraftKings to include prediction market operations nationwide, with plans to broaden arrangements with other industry partners in the coming weeks.
The league has recently imposed wagering limitations on specific fine-grained betting types, such as which player first achieves a statistical metric, opening tip-off results, or wagers on athletes expected to play limited minutes. These restrictions apply similarly to prediction market partners to curb vulnerabilities associated with single-action markets where internal information could heavily influence contract prices. Player commercial relationships with prediction platforms have also surfaced, with Milwaukee Bucks player Giannis Antetokounmpo promoting Kalshi and Philadelphia 76ers player LeBron James signing an agreement with Polymarket, while San Antonio Spurs player Victor Wembanyama publicly stated he will not endorse such platforms. Financial terms of the multi-year partnerships were not disclosed.
