From Decrypt · By Decrypt Staff
In brief
The CFTC and NBA signed a memorandum of understanding to protect the integrity of professional basketball in prediction markets, agreeing to share information and flag abuses like insider trading and fraud.
The NBA joins MLB and NHL in partnering with the regulator.
It lands amid a federal-vs-state jurisdiction fight—the CFTC is defining event contracts as “swaps,” the NFL is battling Kalshi at the Supreme Court and has balked at signing on.
The NBA has struck a deal with the top U.S. derivatives regulator to help police prediction markets, becoming the latest major sports league to formalize an integrity partnership as betting on games moves onto federally regulated platforms.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Monday it signed a memorandum of understanding with the basketball league to protect the integrity of professional basketball in prediction markets.
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Under the agreement, the two will share information and communicate regularly on integrity matters while working to keep the markets fair and transparent.
“The NBA joins the MLB and NHL in taking a responsible step toward protecting sports integrity and market participants from abuses in prediction markets like insider trading and fraud,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said in a statement, thanking Commissioner Adam Silver for prioritizing “the integrity of professional basketball and America’s financial markets.”
The pact reflects how quickly sports-outcome betting has migrated to CFTC-regulated venues like Kalshi and Polymarket, which let users trade “event contracts” on real-world outcomes, including who wins a given game.
That shift has raised integrity concerns familiar to the gambling world, chiefly the risk that insiders could trade on nonpublic information. The league-regulator MOUs are meant to build a channel for flagging suspicious activity, following the NHL’s move to become the first major league to license its trademarks to a prediction market and MLB’s integrity agreement tied to a Polymarket deal.
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