NBA Partners With Prediction Markets Polymarket, Kalshi

The NBA has reached a deal to partner with prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi, the league announced on Monday, per reports from Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic and David Purdum of ESPN.

As part of the agreement, Polymarket and Kalshi will be able to use official NBA and team logos and will receive access to official league data. In return, the NBA will receive control over the sort of trades the companies offer on their respective platforms. Polymarket and Kalshi will also work with the league to help identify suspicious trading and to attempt to prevent insider trading.

While prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are widely viewed as an extension of sports betting, they don’t function quite like a standard sportsbook does. As Vorkunov explains, predictions markets “serve as an exchange for wagers between two parties on the outcome of future events,” as opposed to a sportsbook setting odds on the outcome of a game or event.

“This category operates a little bit differently in terms of the types of markets they offered,” NBA executive VP Scott Kaufman-Ross told Vorkunov. “It was very important for us to have that approval right. So yes, if there is an objectionable market that they want to offer, we have the right to say no to that.”

The NHL reached partnership agreements with Polymarket and Kalshi in 2025, while MLB made a deal with Polymarket in March. Discussing the NBA’s deal with the two companies, Kaufman-Ross told Purdum that the league held off on reaching a deal until the right “regulatory framework” had been established.

“We were really just waiting for that moment where we felt like we had all of the proper pieces in place in order for us to get comfortable to move forward,” Kaufman-Ross said.

As part of Monday’s announcement, the NBA said it has reached a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which is the federal body that claims to regulate the prediction market industry. The question of whether that industry ought to fall under state or federal jurisdiction is the subject of a legal dispute, with New York among the states suing prediction markets and claiming they’re offering unlicensed sports betting.

Because prediction markets are currently regulated by the CFTC and not individual states, they can be offered in all 50 states, which has resulted in top sportsbooks entering the market as well. The NBA is expanding its deal with DraftKings to include prediction markets and expects to do the same with FanDuel and Fanatics, among others, Kaufman-Ross told The Athletic.

While the NBA’s agreements with Polymarket and Kalshi are new, a handful of NBA stars had previously entered into sponsorship deals with those companies, including LeBron James with Polymarket and Giannis Antetokounmpo with Kalshi.

As Vorkunov points out, those arrangements have received some criticism, given that the NBA has recently been at the center of a handful of gambling-related scandals involving Jontay Porter, Malik Beasley, and Terry Rozier, among others, while active players have reported facing increased abuse on social media from sports bettors.