New filings posted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) suggest that FanDuel Predicts, the new prediction market app, could be launching as soon as the first week of December, in time for the NFL’s Week 14, the College Football Playoff, and the NBA Cup tournament.
The filings by the CME Group, which will power the markets offered on FanDuel Predicts, are dated Nov. 19. Previously focused on financial and economic markets, these will be CME’s first-ever sports event contracts, which cover pro football, college football and pro basketball games and championships.
Last week it was announced that FanDuel Predicts would launch sometime in December. Along with basketball and football markets, the announcement also said that the new app will offer hockey markets. But the first batch of filings don’t include NHL games.
But CME could self-certify additional markets prior to the launch of FanDuel Predicts, which will only offer sports event contracts in states without legalized sports betting.
Initial CME Group filings are for NFL, NBA and college football
CME filed separate contract certifications for Event Contract Swaps on College Football Games, Event Contract Swaps on Pro Football Games, Event Contract Swaps on Pro Basketball Games, and Event Contract Swaps on Pro Football Season Champion Games. But each certification filing includes all of the initial batch of sports covered.
There is no mention of spreads or point total markets in the initial filings, which only cover game and championship winners. There will likely be additional types of sports markets added to FanDuel Predicts in the future, if not prior to the launch.
First FanDuel Predicts sports contract live as early as Dec. 5
Under the “Initial Listing Schedule” section of the filing, the earliest date these first contracts are to be listed on Globex, CME’s electronic trading platform, is Dec. 5 at 5:01 p.m. ET. That is for the NFL game contracts, and the filing states that the first contract will be for “a single game scheduled to occur on 12/8/25.”
The NFL’s sole Dec. 8 game is a Monday Night Football matchup between the Eagles and Chargers, which closes out Week 14. The filing says that “the typical listing schedule” for NFL games will begin on Dec. 7 for subsequent weeks, suggesting the next games available to trade will be Week 15 matches.
If the contracts are live on Globex on Dec. 5, they could conceivably be immediately offered on FanDuel Predicts. That suggests a possible rollout of the prediction app as early as the first week of December.
The NBA game contracts will first be listed on Dec. 7 for games scheduled on Dec. 9. That’s the first day of the NBA Cup, a relatively new in-season tournament.
The NFL championship contracts will be offered for each team in the league. These contracts will also be listed on Globex on Dec. 7.
NCAA football markets focused on College Football Playoffs
In CME’s filings, the contract titles and clearing codes are shown for each individual NBA and NFL team. The college football markets appear to be geared towards this season’s College Football Playoff (CFP). The 30 teams listed are ones that have appeared in the AP and CFP Top 25 rankings. But at least one team on the list, James Madison, can’t make the CFP.
The filings say that these NCAA football contracts will be listed “for each applicable college football team” on Dec. 7, the same day the final Top 25 CFP ranking is scheduled for release. So these contracts will be just for those final 25 teams.
CME’s detailed sports contract filings say that they are intended to be offered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except for two 2-hour maintenance periods between 3-5 a.m. ET on Saturdays and Tuesdays.
The filings also lay out a “listing schedule” for when each week’s contracts will be offered. The NBA contracts will be listed “only for games scheduled within the next three calendar days,” while the football game contracts will be listed week to week.
CFTC portal now shows Polymarket self-certified sports, elections contracts
Now that the government shutdown has ended, the CFTC has resumed adding submitted self-certified contracts like the ones CME filed to its Designated Contract Market Products portal once again.
That includes the first four self-certified contracts from Polymarket US, which are now listed in the portal, filed under the name QCEX, which is the CFTC-approved exchange Polymarket acquired earlier this year to facilitate its U.S. relaunch. The sports contracts for game winners, point spreads and point totals, as well as the election winners, were first posted to the new Polymarket Exchange website in early October.
Polymarket is gearing up for its imminent return to the U.S. InGame reported yesterday that Polymarket US has been stepping up its beta testing. Testers caused trading volume to spike on Nov. 16, mostly with NFL trades, resulting in $546,062 in trading volume off of 1,688 trades.
That level of beta testing is the latest indication that Polymarket US could go live any day now.
