NHL’s Partnerships With Kalshi, Polymarket Raises Eyebrows Around Sports, Gambling Industries
In the newest validation of prediction markets, the NHL introduced Tuesday that it has struck licensing agreements with each Kalshi and Polymarket.
The NHL turns into the primary main US sports activities league to ink an official partnership within the prediction market area.
The deal provides Kalshi and Polymarket entry to NHL knowledge, rights to the league’s logos, and official partnership designation.
Kalshi is already leveraging the connection, displaying the NHL brand on its app. Without the right licensing agreements, the corporate has resisted utilizing official marks of any league; Polymarket stopped utilizing NFL logos on its platform after feeling blowback for displaying them with out permission early within the season.
The NHL additionally has official relationships with a number of sportsbooks, whose market share Kalshi, Polymarket and others are after. In the minds of many playing trade observers, in addition to state regulators, there’s little distinction between sports activities betting markets and the “sports activities occasion contracts” prediction markets provide.
What NHL deal means For Kalshi, Polymarket and prediction markets total
While it’s odd to see Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan quoted in the identical press release, the rivals’ simultaneous partnerships present additional legitimization of their trade.
“Prediction markets are right here to remain,” Keith Wachtel, president of NHL enterprise, instructed the Wall Street Journal’s Alexander Osipovich, who first reported the information.
It received’t transfer the needle a lot by way of buying and selling quantity – among the many 4 main sports activities, hockey does the least sports activities betting deal with at sportsbooks – however the NHL alliance quantities to an endorsement of prediction markets.
Mansour says the deal helps Kalshi shed its “renegade” picture.
“One huge step ahead for the legitimacy of prediction markets,” Coplan posted on X.
NHL by itself with prediction markets
The NHL believes aligning with the 2 main prediction markets is a way to show their product to “tech-savvy customers of prediction markets,” per Wachtel, however the league is ruffling feathers by cozying as much as these gray-market operators.
For one factor, it in all probability isn’t sitting nicely with the NHL’s sportsbook companions.
The partnership can also be a departure from different leagues’ public posture towards prediction markets. The NFL, NBA and MLB have all filed feedback with the CFTC, expressing concern about prediction markets’ potential unfavorable affect on the integrity of their video games and their too-close resemblance to conventional sports activities betting.
On a name with media forward of the 2025 season, NFL VP of Sports Betting David Highhill stated, “We’re involved that if these markets aren’t correctly regulated, they may very well be inclined to manipulation or worth distortion. … Prediction markets lack sure regulatory necessities that we all know regulated sportsbooks are topic to.”
Bill Miller, president of the American Gaming Association, known as the connection “deeply regarding”
“This transfer sends a troubling message: that integrity, accountability, and clear legality are non-compulsory in sports activities gaming,” Miller said in a statement to ESPN. “No skilled league ought to lend its model to firms working in defiance of state regulation and client safety norms.”
The NFL, Highhill intimated in August, can also be uncomfortable with the continued authorized battles between prediction markets and states, however the blessing of the CFTC seems to be adequate for the NHL.
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