The NBA began its 2026-27 campaign earlier this month. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
In a controversial move, US basketball’s elite NBA has struck a pair of new partnerships with prominent prediction market operators Polymarket and Kalshi, becoming the latest major US sports property to wade into the ongoing trend.
Going forward, both operators will now be able to leverage NBA data, statistics, and, perhaps crucially, NBA intellectual property (including logos and imagery) in their operations as the league’s ‘preferred prediction-market exchanges’.
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In return, the league will be able to govern what NBA-related markets the pair can and cannot offer, as well as prohibit trading on NBA events by all league and team personnel, with the NBA also to collaborate with Polymarket and Kalshi for information sharing around any investigations regarding illicit and suspicious trading.
To facilitate the agreement, the NBA has struck a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the regulatory body that oversees the prediction market industry) to ensure proper oversight of the prediction market business.
On that element, NBA head of media distribution and partnerships Scott Kaufman-Ross said: “As this category develops, we believe it is important to work constructively with regulators and operators to help ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. These partnerships represent an important step in establishing a framework that creates new opportunities to engage our fans.”
In this regard, the NBA is following the lead of the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, UFC, and Major League Baseball, all of which struck agreements with Polymarket and/or Kalshi in the past year.
The NBA is, perhaps, the most prominent among all of these sports properties, and second in the US only to the NFL in terms of reach.
The NFL remains the last major men’s sports property in the US without a Polymarket or Kalshi partnership, and that may remain the case for the foreseeable future, according to comments NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made last month.
In a September interview, Goodell said that the NFL would not partner with either until there are stronger federal guardrails, stating: “We think that there needs to be stronger regulations in the prediction markets.
“We want to see that to protect the integrity of our game. We want to make sure we’re protecting the consumers that are on those platforms for the NFL.”
The NFL is not wanting for sponsorship revenue, and clearly would much rather wait to see how ongoing regulatory disputes involving Polymarket and Kalshi play out, while the NBA has taken the opposite approach, seeking to enter the space early in order to prevent malpractice in the interim and in effect take control of its destiny.
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