Key Takeaways
- Saquon Barkley told Front Office Sports he sold his Polymarket stake to comply with NFL rules.
- The NFL bars players from investing in or endorsing prediction markets, which it treats like sportsbooks.
The NFL Treats Prediction Markets Like Sportsbooks
Barkley told Front Office Sports that he had to divest his Polymarket investment after the league made clear that players cannot hold stakes in prediction market companies.
“I am not in that right now,” he said. “I am not allowed to be in that.”
The NFL briefs players before each season on what they can and can’t do with endorsements and investments, Barkley said. Prediction markets fall under a particular ban in that department.
“So I kinda had to get out of that,” he added. “I was in it before, but no bueno.”
Polymarket was among the startup investments revealed in a profile of Barkley last September. Sometime between then and this summer, the league told players they could not have financial interests in prediction market platforms. The NFL confirmed on Wednesday that its ban on investing in and promoting sportsbooks extends to prediction markets, but declined to comment specifically on Barkley’s case. Polymarket also declined to comment.
Neither the size of Barkley’s stake nor when he sold it has been disclosed. An NFL Players Association spokesperson said in January that the league “views prediction markets as gambling entities, so players are not allowed to be an endorser or brand ambassador for a company like Kalshi or Polymarket under the gambling policy.”
Unlike the other major American sports leagues, which have now almost fully come around on partnering with prediction markets, the NFL has kept its distance from the sector.
When it signed DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics as sportsbook partners in August, a league executive said prediction markets were not a space it was considering commercially. The league barred prediction market ads from last year’s Super Bowl. This month it urged the Supreme Court to take up New Jersey’s case against Kalshi, and it has said it believes prediction markets should, for now, be regulated at the state level.
The NBA named Kalshi and Polymarket its preferred prediction market partners earlier this week, and reportedly does not stop players from investing in or endorsing them, as long as they don’t promote NBA-related contracts. LeBron James, who teased a Polymarket partnership in September, has a deal with the company that is reportedly worth $15 million a year.
Major League Baseball signed an exclusive Polymarket deal in March, reportedly worth up to $300 million over four years, while the NHL has partnered with both Kalshi and Polymarket. The MLS, like the MLB, has only partnered with Polymarket at the league level.
