In the case of Kalshi, it’s can’t stop, won’t stop.
The leading predictions market has added college football games to its burgeoning portfolio of sports event contract offerings. Dustin Gouker’s Event Horizon substack was the first to report the five scheduled Week 0 games and a good portion of Week 1 games were live on the Kalshi website.
The move to offer college football comes after bettors took to Kalshi’s prediction markets for the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments in March and early April. A total series volume of $412.4 million worth of contracts were traded for the men’s tournament and $91.8 million for the women’s tournament.
Kalshi’s decision to expand into a new sport again raises the stakes in the sports betting industry as the prediction market’s 50-state platform threatens to disrupt the state-by-state framework built over seven-plus years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 unconstitutional in May 2018. That paved the way for a majority of states — currently 38 and the District of Columbia, with Missouri set to launch Dec. 1 — to offer either commercial or tribal-based sports betting.
The total amount wagered commercially in the U.S. since the first bets were taken in June 2018 is nearing $530 billion, and nearly $8.8 billion in state taxes have been raised.
Lawsuits? What lawsuits?
Kalshi’s decision to steam ahead comes while it wages a multi-state battle in courtrooms across the country looking to turn back cease-and-desist orders from state gaming regulatory agencies. It has lawsuits being heard in Nevada, New Jersey, and Maryland, and another four states — including large-market sports betting ones Illinois and Arizona — have sent Kalshi cease-and-desist letters.
The decision to offer college football also tracks with recent trends in Kalshi’s prediction markets as InGame reported in May that the total series of volume in sport contracts accounted for more than 70% of its total volume in a nearly three-month span from Feb. 25-May 17. A second study of data by InGame showed Kalshi generated $15 million in revenue over a 90-day span from Feb. 25-May 25.
Throughout the entire process of Kalshi expanding into sports event contracts, the regulatory body that oversees prediction markets — the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — has yet to provide a definitive legal status for prediction markets offering sports event contracts.
In April, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit granted the CFTC a motion for a voluntary dismissal of its appeal against Kalshi regarding election event wagering. That dismissal meant a district court ruling that allowed Kalshi to offer event contracts on the 2024 presidential election was allowed to stand.
