NFL backs New Jersey's Supreme Court bid to regulate Kalshi's sports contracts as gambling

The circuit split that makes a grant plausible existed before the league filed. The Ninth Circuit ruled in August that states can enforce gambling laws against Kalshi's sports contracts ^[5], and the circuits now divide two to one against the company ^[24]. Quartz called the conflict "the kind of circuit split that draws Supreme Court scrutiny" ^[5]. Forty jurisdictions back New Jersey's petition: 39 states and the District of Columbia ^[25]. To that the NFL adds the sport with the most trading tied to its games, along with a question for the justices: "What constitutional power allows Congress to override states' traditional police powers to regulate intrastate gambling?" ^[4]

If the Court declines, the split stands. If it takes the case and Kalshi wins, sports contracts stay with the CFTC. The league says the agency's limited resources are the reason states are better placed to oversee these markets ^[14]. A New Jersey win would let states apply their own gambling rules to the platforms ^[20].

The volume figure explains why the platforms are fighting. NFL games took $1.8 billion of the $3.3 billion traded on opening Sunday ^[2]. That is about 55% ^[18], and every other contract on every platform shared the remaining $1.5 billion ^[19]. Crypto Briefing argued that the platforms' model depends on one federal framework, and that if the Court sides with New Jersey that advantage "could shrink considerably" ^[21].

I think a loss would make these platforms look more like sportsbooks, which already deal with dozens of state regimes, as Crypto Briefing described ^[21]. The league's own sportsbook partners, DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics, already run prediction market products alongside that business ^[12]. The counter-case is that the federal framework is most of what separates Kalshi from those three. Without it, Kalshi competes on their terms. For a standalone platform, that makes a loss a question of survival more than of cost.

The NFL's commercial choices line up with its brief. It has kept prediction platforms off its airwaves and declined commercial partnerships with them ^[13], and its betting deals are with sportsbooks ^[12]. Goodell confirmed on September 11 that the league was still talking to operators about changes that could make them partners ^[10]. The filings do not show those talks formally ending. "We don't feel like we have to be the first in this. We feel like we're going to be right, and the best thing to do is be patient," Goodell told CNBC ^[11].

This view is wrong if a state win ends with states refusing to license sports contracts at all. The league's stated position points the other way. It said it is not opposed to prediction markets in principle, and it considers state regulators better placed than the CFTC to oversee them ^[14].