Prediction marketplace Kalshi has added two new NBA Finals markets ahead of Thursday’s championship series tip-off. As of June 2, Kalshi users are now able to trade on who will be named the series MVP. The platform simultaneously added an NBA Finals “Series Score” market.
These latest market additions showcase Kalshi’s steady expansion of sports-related offerings, which have grown to dominate the prediction platform’s trading volume. Despite ongoing legal challenges by some gambling regulators in states that have legalized sports betting, Kalshi has emerged as an increasingly popular sportsbook alternative that remains legal in all 50 states due to it being regulated on a federal level by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Kalshi continues to add new types of sports markets
Kalshi began offering sports markets at the start of 2025, with event contracts for who would win NFL playoff games and the Super Bowl, as well as NCAA basketball tournament outcomes. Since then, Kalshi has found success with market offerings for other sports, including everything from tennis and golf to hockey and the NBA.
Kalshi’s sports offerings have been largely dominated by single-game and tournament/series outcome markets, which are similar to moneyline and futures betting at traditional sportsbooks. But Kalshi has started to add different sports market types. In May, after NFL schedules were released, Kalshi added markets for how many games each NFL team will win this coming regular season.
The recent NBA Finals series score and MVP markets are the latest examples of Kalshi offering “betting” types previously only legally available at licensed sportsbooks in the states that allow them.
What other types of sports markets might Kalshi offer?
As the only prediction platform with CFTC oversight (apart from Crypto.com, which has a more limited sports contract offering), Kalshi has been able to self-certify new markets (which they do on a regular basis) and then add them immediately to the platform if they choose to. The CFTC has the authority to challenge these self-certified Designated Contract Markets, but hasn’t shown an eagerness to do so in the past several months.
Kalshi doesn’t have nearly as many markets as sportsbooks, but they’re showing a willingness to gradually add more that resemble other bets offered by traditional sports betting operators, including the recent NBA additions.
Kalshi doesn’t currently have any markets related to individual player performance, which sportsbooks offer as player prop bets. But that could be coming at any moment. Kalshi self-certified a “Will (achievement) be obtained by (participant)?” market in February, which could surface as a market in which users could trade on whether or not a particular player will reach a particular statistical benchmark during a game.
Kalshi doesn’t offer anything similar to point spread or point total betting at the moment, nor do any markets match the multitudes of game props available at sportsbooks. But there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping them from offering modified versions of those markets, as well.
For now, sportsbooks will continue to have an edge over prediction markets in some other areas, like SGPs (same game parlays) and other parlay offerings, which have been extremely lucrative for sports betting operators. But some experts believe that it’s entirely possible for Kalshi to develop some sort of modified parlay product in the future, which has the potential to even further disrupt the legal sports betting industry.
Kalshi sports markets unavailable at traditional sportsbooks
Kalshi does have an advantage over sportsbooks with certain sports markets. At Kalshi, customers are able to trade on sports-adjacent markets that have nothing to do with gameplay.
Ahead of the Super Bowl, for example, Kalshi offered markets on things like what songs would be played during the halftime show, which companies would run commercials during the broadcast and which celebrities would be in attendance. Some of these markets have attracted a decent amount of trading volume. The market for Super Bowl commercials attracted more than $6 million in trades.
Kalshi also had a market for which celebrities would be at a recent NBA Finals game in New York. And while not related to a specific game, there is currently a market for who will be on the cover of NBA 2K26.
U.S. sportsbooks don’t offer such sports markets, largely due to regulations against them in most sports betting states. But they have been popular in countries that do allow them and at off-shore betting sites. They also usually attract a lot of media attention in the U.S. For now, Kalshi is the only legal CFTC-regulated platform to offer all these markets, which has helped the exchange attract even the most casual sports fans.
