NBA names Kalshi and Polymarket preferred exchanges, signs CFTC information-sharing deal

The National Basketball Association has made Kalshi and Polymarket its preferred prediction market exchanges and signed an information-sharing agreement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) focused on basketball-related markets. For PSPs and other operators watching the sports event-contract space, the practical point is simple: the NBA is now putting formal integrity and data rails around a category that is still being fought over in court.

1. According to Monday’s announcement, Kalshi and Polymarket will get access to official NBA data supplied by Sportradar, the league’s designated data distribution partner, for settling authorized markets. Both platforms will also have rights to use NBA intellectual property and to conduct promotional activities in the United States.
2. The agreements include integrity safeguards: NBA and team personnel are prohibited from trading NBA event contracts, and the parties must cooperate on suspicious trading investigations. In other words, the league is not treating prediction markets as a branding exercise; it is attaching rules around who can trade and how suspicious activity gets reviewed.
3. Beyond those two exchanges, the NBA expanded its existing agreement with DraftKings to cover prediction markets and said it expects to announce similar arrangements with other industry operators in the coming weeks.
4. In a separate announcement, CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said the agreement with the NBA would strengthen information sharing to address insider trading and fraud in prediction markets. The NBA now joins Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League in establishing similar arrangements with the regulator.
5. The commercial deals land in the middle of an unresolved legal fight over whether federal commodities rules override state gambling laws governing sports prediction markets. The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Kalshi in September in a case involving Ohio and Tennessee, following a similar decision by the 9th Circuit, while the 3rd Circuit earlier allowed Kalshi to keep operating in New Jersey while its appeal proceeds.
6. State enforcement has also continued. On Oct. 20, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown sued Kalshi, alleging that the platform had facilitated illegal betting in the state since 2024. Utah officials are seeking to recover an estimated $30 million to $60 million in profits allegedly earned by Kalshi and other defendants.
7. The US Supreme Court has been asked to review the New Jersey dispute, with 39 states and Washington, DC, supporting the petition. The National Football League, which has not entered into commercial partnerships with prediction market exchanges, also backed the petition, arguing that certain sports event contracts threaten game integrity because they are susceptible to manipulation. The justices have not yet agreed to hear the case.

For high-risk operators and their payment partners, the key takeaway is that prediction markets are moving deeper into the same infrastructure playbook used by regulated sports media and betting-adjacent products: official data access, integrity controls, and regulator-facing information sharing on one side, and litigation over federal versus state authority on the other. That combination tends to matter more than the headline sponsorship itself.