The NFL filed an amicus brief on October 8 urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take New Jersey’s challenge to Kalshi’s sports-event contracts. The league argued that the products are sports gambling, rather than swaps regulated under federal law, placing it behind New Jersey’s push for the Court to resolve the dispute.
NFL backs New Jersey’s bid for Supreme Court review
In its filing, the NFL asked the Supreme Court to hear New Jersey’s case against Kalshi, placing the league on one side of a legal fight over prediction-market contracts linked to games and other sporting events.
The intervention concerns whether contracts tied to sporting outcomes should be treated as federally regulated financial swaps or as gambling products subject to state oversight. The NFL argues that the nature of the activity, rather than the label attached to the contract, should control the legal analysis.
Sports contracts accounted for $1.8 billion on NFL opening Sunday
The league cited the scale of trading in its argument for Supreme Court review. It said sports contracts accounted for $1.8 billion of the $3.3 billion in prediction-market trading volume recorded on the first Sunday of the 2026 NFL season.
That figure means sports-related contracts represented more than half of the trading volume referenced by the NFL for that day. The league used the activity to underscore that the case concerns a substantial and active market, not a narrow question about a limited set of contracts.
NFL says Kalshi-style markets lack sportsbook protections
The NFL argued that prediction markets do not carry safeguards used by state-regulated sportsbooks, including restrictions on wagers that can be manipulated, monitoring for insider information and a minimum betting age of 21.
In its filing supporting New Jersey’s petition, the league tied those protections to its contention that sports-event contracts function as wagering, while setting out a legal and policy argument rather than establishing that such safeguards are absent across every prediction-market product.
Third, Sixth and Ninth Circuits disagree on the swap question
The request arrives against a split among federal appeals courts. According to the Associated Press, the Third Circuit treated Kalshi’s contracts as swaps under federal law, while the Sixth and Ninth Circuits concluded that sports-event contracts do not satisfy the statutory definition of a swap.
That conflict is central to New Jersey’s request for Supreme Court review and to the NFL’s intervention. A decision to take the case would give the Court an opportunity to address the differing interpretations of federal law now applied across the circuits.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
Source: Crypto Daily