Kalshi lists NFL preseason contracts after league asked halt in March
In March, the NFL asked Kalshi and other platforms to stop offering event contracts on markets the league considers easily manipulated. Despite that request, Kalshi is now listing NFL preseason football event contracts on matchups including Steelers-Bills, Patriots-Browns, 49ers-Raiders, and Rams-Chargers. The March request came as prediction market event contracts grew in prominence ahead of the NFL season start. Kalshi's new listings appear after the league's pushback and amid ongoing state-level legal challenges to its sports contracts.
The NFL's March request specifically warned about manipulation risk in certain event contract markets. Kalshi's decision to list preseason contracts anyway signals it either disagrees with the league's assessment or accepts the enforcement exposure. That stance isolates Kalshi if the NFL escalates to formal complaints or CFTC pressure, especially while it already faces active suits in Connecticut and New York and a Washington operational halt. Rivals like Polymarket have retreated from similar NFL-adjacent filings, leaving Kalshi as the lone visible platform testing this boundary.
Traders holding these preseason contracts face validity risk if any regulator or court later agrees with the NFL's manipulation concern and voids the underlying market. The CFTC's pending rulemaking could resolve the ambiguity, but until then Kalshi is building open interest on a product category the NFL has explicitly flagged as problematic. Each new listing deepens the pool of contracts that could be challenged, raising the stakes if enforcement lands after kickoff.
Kalshi keeps listing NFL contracts even as Polymarket recently withdrew its own NFL player participation filings one day after CFTC self-certification, suggesting rival platforms read the same regulatory tea leaves differently.