What Will it Take for the NFL to Embrace Prediction Markets?

Prediction markets are making an aggressive push to acquire customers this football season, but absent from those efforts will be any official tie to the NFL. You won’t see ads for the exchanges during games or in stadiums. Teams aren’t allowed to do sponsorship deals with those companies. Players can’t endorse the products.

For this to change – for the NFL to embrace the booming industry as other professional sports have done – prediction markets will have to bend to the league’s terms.

Novig, a recent entrant in the prediction market space, says the “Responsible Trading Framework” it announced last month was created independent of the NFL’s influence. However, the new guidelines seem to address some of the league’s concerns. 

The set of standards includes a minimum age of 21, self-control tools for customers, responsible marketing guidelines, requirements for the exchange to monitor risky behavior, and other consumer protections embedded in contracts. 

In a letter to the CFTC in July, the NFL stressed its concerns regardings markets susceptible to manipulation or insider trading. It also listed advertising restrictions, the right to object to certain contacts, as well as the 21-year-old minimum, among its priorities.

While negotiations between the NFL and prediction markets continue, an official partnership remains unlikely until operators meet the league’s demands. Protecting the integrity of the sport — the theme of the league’s July letter to the CFTC – is central to those discussions, according to Eric Foote, founder & CEO at VIG Partners.

“There are four or five categories that the NFL is really gonna push the envelope on,” Foote, who is privy to the league’s negotiations with prediction markets, told Gambling Insider. “Until they get clear direction on most of those, I still see them sitting out through the course of this NFL season or a portion of it.” 

NFL Wants 21+ Standard for Prediction Markets

A minimum age that aligns with the national sports betting standard is among the NFL’s demands for prediction markets, and Foote surmises that may have been a factor in Novig’s thinking.

“I think they’re kind of taking the playbook from the NFL and going that route to see what leverage they can get with the NFL and actually start at 21,” Foote said.

“Our Responsible Trading framework wasn’t developed in response to the NFL,” Novig founder Jacob Fortinsky clarified in an email. “We had been working on these standards before the NFL announced its guidelines.

“The same is true of our 21+ age standard. Novig has always been a 21+ platform, well before we became a federally regulated exchange. We respect and value the views of the NFL and other leagues on responsible participation, but ultimately these were decisions we made based on how we want to run our business and the standard we want to set for the industry. 

“Our hope is that we can lead by example and create what we refer to as a race to the top.”

Are Other Prediction Markets On Board With 21+?

While Novig’s RG blueprint has earned praise throughout the gambling industry – and could be a step toward the NFL’s embrace – it will likely be met with resistance by other exchanges. 

“I think it’s gonna be really hard for prediction markets to go backwards on 18 to 21,” Foote commented.

Dean Sisun, co-founder & CEO of ProphetX, another recent sports-focused entrant in the prediction markets space, said of Novig’s new policies, “I like a lot of what they did. I don’t know if I’m on board with the age requirement, to be honest, and that might sound bad at first, but these are fundamentally different instruments than gambling.  So why should they succumb to the same rules that gambling has?  

“I’ve also always believed that you can serve in the army at 18, but you can’t place a sports bet until you’re 21? You can trade options at 18, but you can’t trade in prediction markets until you’re 21? To me, that just fundamentally doesn’t make any sense, but I think a lot of what they’re doing is very good.”

No Sponsorship, No Problem? 

MLB (Polymarket, memorandum of understanding with the CFTC), the NHL (Kalshi and Polymarket, plus MOU with CFTC) and MLS (Polymarket) all have official relationships with prediction markets. A Kalshi deal with the NBA could come soon, CEO Tarek Mansour suggested this week to RotoWire’s Bill Speros.

Prediction market brands, though, don’t necessarily need official marketing rights to reach NFL fans. They will find a path.

Foote – who served as Chief Strategy Officer at PointsBet when the sportsbook had a formal relationship with the NFL – believes in the value in league and team partnerships, but he acknowledges there are multitudes of methods to tell a story to a target audience.

And to do it relatively cheaply.  As the league’s official sportsbooks, FanDuel, DraftKings and Fanatics combine to pay the NFL in the ten figures.

Without official rights for prediction markets, said Foote, “It’s more challenging, but it’s more cost effective because they’re not paying the big fee to the NFL and they’re untying up those dollars to be able to invest them back in.”

As any person conscious in the U.S. can attest, prediction markets’ message is getting through. Reps with Kalshi-branded apparel are showing up at games; social media feeds are buzzing, with permission or without, NFL team logos and players in uniform; ads are popping up on apps ranging from The Weather Channel to TeamReach, a platform for rec and youth sports.

“They do it in very unconventional means,” Foote observes. “There are ways to go about marketing without having to go through [the NFL’s] official channels or use their official shield or team marks or Super Bowl marks or things that Fanatics gets in their deal. …

“I’m seeing it on a daily basis where I live [in Hawaii], and I’m sure many others are seeing it on a regular basis, too.”