NFL, Dodd-Frank Act Author Weigh In on CFTC Rules for Prediction Markets
As prediction markets grow, so does the list of institutions with something to say about how they should be regulated. Two voices in this week’s comment period are worth paying particular attention to.
The CFTC’s public comment period on its proposed prediction market rulemaking closed Sunday night with 736 total comments on the docket, after a surge of several hundred filings appeared Tuesday morning following a slow start.
Two submissions stand out from the rest: a letter from the National Football League obtained by Dustin Gouker, creator of The Closing Line on Substack, and a comment filed by former Senator Blanche Lincoln, author of the Dodd-Frank Act provision at the center of the entire prediction-markets regulatory fight.
They want opposite things. Taken together, they illustrate exactly why this rulemaking is so difficult to resolve.
The NFL Raises Five Key Concerns
The NFL told CFTC Chairman Michael Selig that the agency’s proposed rulemaking contains useful proposals but falls “significantly short” in several areas that matter most for sports integrity. The letter, dated July 27, is the league’s second formal submission to the CFTC this year and reflects a consistent position the NFL has held throughout the regulatory process: it wants sharper restrictions, not the framework the proposed rules provide.
The NFL raised five specific concerns, and all of them come across as well thought out and practical. It wants the CFTC to ban contracts that are “knowable in advance” by a single individual, covering situations where someone with inside knowledge of an injury, lineup decision, or officiating assignment could trade with an information advantage other market participants cannot access.
The NFL also wants awards markets, such as contracts on who will win Offensive Player of the Year, excluded because their outcomes depend on discretionary panel voting rather than objective on-field results. It wants the 10-day review window for newly self-certified contracts extended, arguing the current timeline could allow contracts to become entrenched before regulators complete their assessment. It wants explicit rules making the use of material non-public information obtained through a duty to a league or team a manipulative practice under the Commodity Exchange Act. And it wants centralized, league-specific prohibited-bettor lists rather than platform-by-platform screening.
The scale of the market growth the NFL cited is striking: one large platform grew from roughly 1,600 daily contract listings in April 2025 to approximately 162,000 a year later, an increase of more than 100-fold. At that pace, the NFL argues, the regulatory window for establishing meaningful safeguards is closing fast.
The NFL’s posture differs meaningfully from Major League Baseball and the NHL, both of which have entered commercial partnerships with Kalshi and Polymarket. The NFL has remained at arm’s length with prediction market platforms, and its comment reflects that independent position.
The Dodd-Frank Author Who Changed Sides
The more politically complicated submission came from Blanche Lincoln, former chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the author of the Dodd-Frank provision that gave the CFTC authority to prohibit event contracts it determines to be against the public interest, specifically including gaming contracts.
In the 2010 floor colloquy that established the legislative record for the provision, Lincoln confirmed to Senator Diane Feinstein that the intent was to empower the CFTC to prevent gambling through futures markets, and that it would be “quite easy to construct an event contract around sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, and Masters Golf Tournament,” adding that such contracts would “not serve any real commercial purpose.”
Lincoln is now a registered lobbyist. Her client list has included Kalshi, and her comment to the CFTC on the proposed rulemaking argues that only the CFTC should decide which futures contracts should be prohibited and warns that state-level interference would “breed uncertainty, which is what companies and financial markets dread most.”
The comment does not address the 2010 colloquy or explain the change in her position. Several courts have cited that colloquy as evidence that the Dodd-Frank gaming provision was specifically intended to cover sports prediction market contracts. The Western District of Michigan’s June 17 ruling, which we covered in detail when it came down, relied heavily on the legislative history of the provision. Courts reviewing the CFTC’s authority to permit sports event contracts have noted that Lincoln’s own floor statements appear to undermine the argument that the provision was designed to protect rather than restrict prediction markets.
Lincoln’s appearance in the comment docket, arguing for a position at odds with the one she articulated when drafting the law, will not go unnoticed by those courts or by the commenters who cited her original statements against the platforms.
Kalshi’s Multi-Front Regulatory Fight
Beyond the comment period, this week saw several developments that suggest the regulatory and legal tide has been moving against prediction markets, or at least against Kalshi specifically, at a faster pace than at any prior point this year.
Nevada agreement: The Nevada Gaming Control Board announced Friday it had reached a binding agreement with Kalshi to shut down all sports, election, and entertainment prediction contracts in the state. Kalshi must fully block Nevada users by August 12 or pay $120,000 per day. The agreement settles months of contempt proceedings that began when investigators found they could still access prohibited contracts from inside Nevada despite a court order requiring geofencing. Kalshi agreed to implement a robust, multi-source geofencing solution through GeoComply rather than face a contempt finding. NGCB Chairman Dreitzer said the board has now shut down every unlicensed prediction market operator it knows of in the state.
Netflix dispute: Kalshi sent Netflix a cease-and-desist demand to remove a trailer for the documentary Instadocs: The Prediction Games, which appeared to show a trader placing a Kalshi bet in Las Vegas during the World Cup. Kalshi alleged the trade receipt shown was fabricated because it contained the term “bet slip,” which it says never appears on its platform. Netflix denied fabrication, saying the trade occurred in May 2025 before any Nevada court order. The documentary premiered Sunday on Netflix.
Both developments, a Nevada capitulation and a public dispute with a Netflix documentary, arrived on the same day the comment period for the rulemaking Kalshi has been counting on for regulatory legitimacy formally closed.
The Sixth Circuit oral arguments on the Ohio and Tennessee appeals took place on Wednesday in Cincinnati. The New Jersey Supreme Court certiorari petition deadline is August 4. The prediction markets fight is reaching more pressure points simultaneously than at any prior point in its two-year history, and the comment record the CFTC now holds includes the league that runs the country’s most-bet sport saying the proposed rules are not enough, and the author of the governing statute saying the opposite of what she said when she wrote it.
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