NHL Commissioner Says League Can Control Prediction-Markets Contracts

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday the league can tell Polymarket and Kalshi to take down specific event contracts it does not approve of.

Bettman’s remarks came during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box. He said the power to direct Polymarket and Kalshi to remove certain contracts is a benefit to the multiyear agreements it reached with those two platforms late last month. Polymarket and Kalshi became “official prediction markets partners” of the NHL, gaining access to proprietary data and the right to use NHL logos on their platforms.

Polymarket and Kalshi—whose sports event contracts are viewed as controversial because they appear so similar to sports betting—have not yet gained similar support from other top pro leagues like the NBA, NFL, and MLB.

Bettman said the agreements were made in part because the league thinks it’s important for fans to know that event contracts are “based on real data.” (Event contract trading involves a user buying a position based on the predicted outcome of an individual game or event, such as “Will the Lightning beat the Flyers?”)

“But more importantly, it gives us control, because we have the ability to take down any contracts we don’t think are appropriate,” he said.

A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed to Front Office Sports that part of the arrangement with the NHL is working together to address contracts the league might have concerns with. 

“A big value of being an official partner of ours is that we can address these things before they go live instead of after,” the spokesperson says.

To date, they say there have not been any contracts the league asked to remove.

A representative for Polymarket declined to comment.

Bettman also touched on the recent gambling scandals that have rocked the NBA and MLB—in the NBA, Terry Rozier and Damon Jones were indicted as part of an alleged scheme that involved insiders selling information to bettors about who would play on a given night; Rozier is specifically accused of purposely taking himself out of a game in order to make sure certain “under” prop bets hit. In MLB, two Guardians pitchers, Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, were indicted for alleged involvement in a scheme to rig individual pitches to benefit bettors. All of those athletes have pleaded not guilty.

Bettman does not believe the NHL is as vulnerable as those leagues.

“I don’t believe our game is susceptible in perhaps the way some others might be,” he said, adding that the league monitors “every second of every game,” as well as lines on betting apps and prediction-markets platforms.

“Being aligned with either the sports betting entities or prediction-market entities gives you the ability to have more control and to observe more closely exactly what’s going on. It’s more protective than anything to have these alignments.”

A representative for the NHL did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.