This NFL Season Is ‘Do or Die’ for Prediction Markets

(Illustration by Dave Murray)

As the NFL season opens Wednesday, there’s a new game in town. Prediction markets could drive $35 billion in wagers, on par with the traditional sports betting industry.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup minted millions of U.S. soccer fans, but their summer fling with European football is over. American football makes its much-anticipated return Wednesday night as the Seattle Seahawks host the New England Patriots in the first game of the National Football League’s 2026-27 season.

While the usual 32 teams kick off their run to the Super Bowl, a new cast of characters will be waging war over the airwaves for supremacy in the burgeoning business of prediction markets.

“This is a do-or-die NFL season for almost everyone,” says Chris Grove, partner emeritus at gambling industry research firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming. “Kalshi is compelled to keep the growth story going, Polymarket has got to firm up its U.S. foundation, major online sports betting operators like DraftKings and FanDuel have to show they can win on both OSB and prediction market terrain, challengers like Underdog and Novig must maintain momentum, and everyone else needs to spend simply to survive.”

Football is the nation’s biggest sport both by viewership and dollars wagered. Citizens analyst Jordan Bender estimates $35 billion will be bet on football through traditional sportsbooks this season. In a sign of their rapid ascent, he expects the prediction markets to take in roughly the same amount.

Americans are now “spending more on average on online gambling than during any period in history,” he wrote in a research note published Tuesday.

But while prediction markets are increasingly embraced by consumers, they have developed a powerful opponent in the National Football League itself.

Unlike the professional baseball and hockey leagues, the NFL has shunned partnerships with prediction markets. The league has raised integrity concerns to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator charged with overseeing the platforms.

Last week, the league brought its concerns about prediction markets directly to operators with a fiery letter from Sabrina Perel, the NFL’s chief compliance officer. Perel reiterated the league’s longstanding opposition to prediction markets tied to a single player’s action or officiating decisions. “It is deeply concerning that bets within the objectionable categories that we identified months ago have been and continue to be listed as contracts on exchanges,” she wrote.

Prediction markets won’t be able to advertise during NFL broadcasts, a league spokesperson confirmed to Barron’s, and national ads run by sportsbooks like DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics won’t be allowed to promote their prediction market offerings.

The uneven playing field could be a respite, even a boon, for the publicly traded shares of sportsbooks, which have been hammered by worries about competition from prediction markets. Shares of DraftKings and FanDuel parent company Flutter Entertainment are down 31% and 53%, respectively, this year.

Advertising restrictions aside, football fans are in for an onslaught of prediction marketing—and “onslaught may end up being an understatement,” Grove says. The season will be the first with a fully competitive prediction market landscape that now counts at least 12 firms.

Wall Street analysts from Stifel expect Polymarket and Kalshi to tap into recent funding rounds to recruit new customers. Together the companies have raised $5.7 billion per PitchBook, with public stock offerings likely on the way.

The publicly traded companies will be making significant investments in customer acquisition, as well, this season—DraftKings and Flutter are set to spend as much as $400 million on their prediction market offerings in the second half of the year, according to Stifel, amid millions more of traditional sports betting promotions.

“From a consumer perspective, that means more free money, it means more odds boosts, it means more commercials, advertising on TV, print, radio,” Bender said in an interview. “It’s the type of spend that we probably haven’t experienced in a couple of years.”

Prediction markets cleared the way for that national advertising push. Event contracts, the underlying product sold on prediction markets, are financial instruments regulated at the federal level; they are accessible nationwide to anyone over the age of 18, even in states that haven’t legalized traditional sports betting, like Texas and California, or where there is a sanctioned monopoly on sports betting, as in Florida. Those three states are the nation’s most populous, with eight NFL teams between them. Before prediction markets, DraftKings and FanDuel couldn’t offer sports betting there.

Nationwide availability is already a marketing message. “Now that DraftKings is available in all 50 states, we can finally go on that road trip we’ve always talked about,” Nick Jonas tells Kevin Hart in DraftKings’ first ad campaign of the season, which sees the pop star and comedian trying on cowboy hats in Austin, Texas, and sitting in Los Angeles traffic.

In the 38 states where sports betting is legal, DraftKings customers will be routed to its traditional sportsbook. In California, Texas, and other states without traditional sports betting, they’ll be sent to the platform’s new prediction market. Customers may not even realize they’re using a different underlying product.

Prediction markets could soon run up against a force even more powerful than the NFL: the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week, the attorney general of New Jersey filed a petition of certiorari with the Supreme Court, asking justices to decide the legality of prediction markets’ sports contracts. The case threatens to blow up the entire industry. If they accept the case, a decision could arrive as early as June 2027, Barron’s reported.

Litigation around sports prediction markets is already having an impact. Access to Kalshi is restricted in Arizona, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, Nevada, and Ohio after successful lawsuits by those states.

Until the Supreme Court weighs in, it’s otherwise an open field. Prediction markets are rushing for the end zone.

Write to Nick Devor at nicholas.devor@barrons.com

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