NBC says NFL season could be prediction markets’ biggest yet

NBC News reported that the 2026 NFL season is officially underway and that analysts think it could be the biggest yet for football prediction markets. Trading on Kalshi and Polymarket could top $36 billion, according to the report.

The timing matters because prediction markets have been growing quickly, and football is now one of the events drawing fresh interest. NBC framed the sport as a near-term catalyst for event-contract volume as the season gets underway.

A Federal Register notice from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission provides some of the policy backdrop. In June, the agency proposed changes to rules governing event contract derivatives, commonly called prediction markets, and said it wanted to more clearly specify which contracts could be found contrary to the public interest and therefore barred from trading or clearing on a CFTC-registered entity.

The proposal also sought to set out the factors the commission would use in making that determination and to align the process with the Commodity Exchange Act. Comments on the proposal were due by 27 July.

The commission said prediction markets are rising in popularity with the public. It said total trading volume across CFTC-registered prediction markets exceeded $25 billion in 2025, even though that was still only a small share of the roughly $31 trillion notional value of the broader futures market regulated by the agency.

The same notice described how these markets work: participants buy or sell event contracts to manage price risk around whether a stated event will occur, and the market price can indicate the probability of that outcome. The CFTC said that applies to everything from macroeconomics and politics to weather, climate and sporting events.