The Closing Bell: Kalshi Now Offers NFL, MLB Win Totals, WNBA Betting
Prediction markets roundup: The CFTC is running out of commissioners; tribes to meet with CFTC; the xAI deal that wasn't; legal updates in four states; things Kalshi's markets got wrong.
The Closing Bell is a roundup of prediction markets news, analysis and other thoughts each week.
The inexorable march of nationwide sports betting expansion continued on a pair of fronts this week:
I reported last week that Kalshi was going to get into win totals after it self-certified the markets last week. That has come quickly, with Kalshi launching win totals both for the NFL and Major League Baseball. For football, users can wager on both a team’s exact win total and whether it will be over or under a win total (see below). For MLB, you can bet on whether teams will eclipse 60, 70, 80, 90 or 100 wins.
Kalshi also launched WNBA single-game betting:
Robinhood started offering single-game markets (analogous to moneylines) for the NBA and NHL via its deal with Kalshi. It also now offers Kalshi’s market for the Indy 500 race to be held this weekend.
A lot of people seem to think the expansion of available sports betting via prediction markets will or has to stop at some point, even though there’s not a whole of evidence pointing to that idea. Kalshi keeps expanding; neither the CFTC nor the courts have shown any interest in slowing any of it down, to date.
The Rubicon still has not been crossed on some of the core offerings of sportsbooks: Point spreads, game totals, parlays and player props. It seems almost inevitable that we’ll get there eventually.
Meanwhile, here’s an interesting report from InGame on how reliant Kalshi has become on sports betting for its trading volume in a very short time. That mirrors my weekly volume reports which show that sports trading is bigger than everything else.
Kalshi will soon learn about the seasonality of sports betting — the next four months will see fairly minimal betting action until football returns in September. That should give it time to prepare for and expand for football season, which is when the rubber really meets the road for US sports betting.
The rest of the roundup:
Commodity Futures Trading Commission to meet with tribal gaming interests (InGame): “According to multiple sources, a senior representative for the CFTC sent a letter earlier this month to certain tribal groups inviting them to participate in a conference call on May 29 at 1 p.m. with Acting Chairman Caroline Pham.”
That roundtable the CFTC scheduled and then canceled to discuss prediction markets seems to be toast. I was at a tribal gaming conference in San Diego recently, and the vibe was very much that prediction markets were public enemy No. 1. Given that tribal sovereignty and federal law overseeing tribal gaming might be the biggest legal threat to nationwide sports betting via Kalshi, hearing the tribes out is probably a good idea for the CFTC. If we keep going down this path, a challenge to sports events contracts from tribal interests seems likely to come at some point.
The CFTC is going to need some more commissioners: At this point, all five of the CFTC commissioners are either planning to leave or have already left:
Commissioners Christy Goldsmith Romero and Summer Mersinger will officially leave at the end of the month.
A Bloomberg report says Kristin Johnson will leave her role.
Reports say acting chair Caroline Pham will leave once the new chair, Brian Quintenz, is in place, assuming he is confirmed.
Former chair Rostin Behnam left in February, and that commissioner seat has been vacant.
What does that mean for the CFTC? For starters, it leaves it without much of its leadership as it deals with a pair of important issues: prediction markets and cryptocurrency.
It likely means CFTC rule-making on prediction markets isn’t going to happen any time soon, if it was going to happen at all.
Given Quintenz’s history with Kalshi as a member of its board, it’s hard to imagine he moves unilaterally to try to slow down or rein in Kalshi’s expansion into sports.
The latest on state legal wrangling with Kalshi:
Arizona: “The Arizona Department of Gaming has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the prediction market platform Kalshi for allegedly offering illegal sports betting in the state. The letter does not mention a deadline for compliance, but asks Kalshi to take “immediate steps to comply with Arizona law. The letter was addressed to Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and signed by Douglas Jensen, the ADG’s chief law enforcement officer. Arizona is the seventh known state to issue a cease-and-desist to Kalshi, joining Nevada, New Jersey, Maryland, Montana, Illinois and Ohio.”
First report from InGame here.
There are three active court cases where Kalshi is trying to stop states from reining in Kalshi on the grounds it is offering illegal sports betting:
Maryland: Briefs are being filed in this case; the latest is Kalshi’s reply to Maryland’s brief on a preliminary injunction, which you can see below:
New Jersey: The case is now in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. New Jersey and Kalshi agreed to stay the district court case while NJ appeals the preliminary injunction granted by the lower court.
Nevada: The Nevada Resort Association has asked to intervene in the case, and Kalshi has responded saying the court should now allow it. Response below:
Click on the link to keep track of the status of prediction markets’ legality.
Bonus legal item: The federal case in Texas between PredictIt et al and the CFTC is still in negotiations to bring it to a settlement. PredictIt had had a no-action letter from the CFTC for its political betting markets. But the CFTC withdrew it, and PredictIt went to court.
In a joint status update filed this week: ”Defendant Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Plaintiffs Kevin Clarke, PredictIt, Inc. and all the others submit this status update as promised by their May 6, 2025, status update (ECF No. 134). Since the parties’ motion for a continuance of the hearing on pending motions and the previous status update (ECF Nos. 133 & 134), the Commission continues to consider a potential resolution of this matter and believes two weeks of additional time would be helpful. The Plaintiffs consent to the requested additional two weeks. The parties therefore jointly request an additional two weeks and propose filing a status report on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, on the status of efforts to bring this matter to a close through a consensual resolution and thereby spare the further consumption of judicial resources. During that additional requested period, the parties respectfully request that the Court continue to stay its consideration of the pending motions previously set for a hearing on April 11, 2025.”
Another bonus item: The Massachusetts Gaming Commission talked about prediction markets during a public meeting (see below, starting at 1:28 mark):
This week in unfortunate Kalshi marketing tactics: Kalshi is promoting that you can “bet on the weather” on Instagram. (The link wasn’t working for me at some point, but is functional as of this morning.) Add it to the long list of times that Kalshi has marketed itself as a gambling platform, despite CEO Tarek Mansour saying “I just don't really know what this has to do with gambling.” At some point I guess Kalshi can just go full YOLO and call it gambling out loud all the time, if nothing is going to stop them.
The Kalshi + xAI deal that wasn’t: I’ve written a bunch of words on all this that you can read. The tl;dr version is Bloomberg reported that Kalshi had a content deal with xAI, Kalshi’s CEO trumpeted it on social media, his posts were deleted a few hours later, Kalshi rescinded the announcement, Bloomberg retracted its story and X/Twitter said there was no deal with a prediction markets platform without naming Kalshi.
The original report that I left up with a note on the updates
My short podcast expressing incredulity at all of this nonsense
I’ve still not gotten any statement of any kind from Kalshi on this mess, although one has been provided to other outlets that the deal had not been mutually confirmed. That still doesn’t really explain how this all happened in the first place.
Kalshi + Solana (Twitter): Users can now deposit using Solana:
Ridiculous things you can
bettrade on at prediction markets:Polymarket edition: “All New Orleans escapees captured by Friday? On Friday, May 16, ten inmates escaped from a jail in New Orleans. Three have since been captured, however seven remain at large.” I mean, if you were one of the prisoners, seems like a great hedge to bet on getting caught. You can turn yourself in and make a lot of money!
Kalshi edition: “What will Trump say during his Commencement Address at West Point?” Mention markets remain one of the most degen ways to bet at Kalshi. What is the economic value in whether or not Trump says things like “leadership” and “strongest?” People are just gambling on what he is going to say.
Things Kalshi didn’t get right: Kalshi likes to take victory laps when its markets predict things accurately. So I think there needs to be some balance on the scale by pointing out when the market gets it wrong.
The New York Knicks were at one point a 99% favorite to win Game 1 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals before losing in historic fashion. This isn’t shocking, but it just underlines that Kalshi is just mirroring probabilities, not telling us the outcomes of sporting events ahead of time.
Kalshi has a market on whether the NFL will ban the “tush push,” a play run by many teams but made famous by the Philadelphia Eagles. Right before a meeting for the vote, some members of the media were reporting the ban would pass, and the odds on a ban at Kalshi approached 90%. The ban ultimately fell short of getting the votes to pass. Kalshi likes to say variations of the idea that prediction markets are “the news, but faster.” In reality, the market was just following news reports. In summary, Go Birds.
The kicker: This tweet seems like a good way to wrap things up this week:
