The NFL Forced Saquon Barkley To Sell His Polymarket Stake

Saquon Barkley is one of the best running backs in football and, by his own telling, a patient investor. This week he told Front Office Sports that one of his bets is gone. "I was in it before, but no bueno," he said, explaining that the NFL made him sell his equity stake in the prediction-market company Polymarket. Meanwhile, the NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS have all partnered with prediction markets, and an NBA star has reportedly signed a multimillion-dollar deal with the same platform.

What Barkley said

According to Front Office Sports (FOS), Barkley's investment in Polymarket was first revealed in a profile last September. At some point between then and this past summer, FOS reports, the league told players they can't hold financial interests in prediction-market platforms. Barkley said the NFL tells players before each season what they can and can't do with endorsements, investments, and training. "I am not in that right now," he said. "I am not allowed to be in that." And: "So I kinda had to get out of that."

The NFL confirmed to FOS on Wednesday that it prohibits investments in and promotion of sportsbooks and prediction markets, but declined to comment on Barkley's case. Polymarket declined to comment. The reports don't say when Barkley sold or what the stake was worth.

The leagues went the other way

Here's where it gets interesting. According to FOS, the NBA announced this week that Kalshi and Polymarket are its "preferred prediction market partners." CNBC reports they get rights to use NBA intellectual property, and that the league also signed an information-sharing memorandum with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. MLB made Polymarket its exclusive exchange partner in March, a deal FOS said could be worth around $300 million (Reuters reported the figure over three years; FOS's latest report says four, so treat the term as unsettled). MLS made a deal with Polymarket in January, and the NHL signed with both Kalshi and Polymarket last October.

The NBA isn't restricting players from investing in or endorsing prediction markets, FOS reports, though players can't promote NBA-related contracts. According to FOS, Giannis Antetokounmpo is a Kalshi investor and LeBron James has a Polymarket deal that will reportedly pay him $15 million a year. So in one league, the player is forced to get out. In another, he's reportedly paid $15 million a year to promote it.

Same priority, opposite conclusions

The most revealing detail is the language. The NBA's Scott Kaufman-Ross said, "Protecting the integrity of the game is our top priority." The NFL's brief to the Supreme Court says, "The NFL's highest priority is preserving the integrity of its games."

Same goal. Opposite playbook. The NFL asked the Supreme Court to take up Flaherty v. KalshiEX (No. 26-299), backing New Jersey's argument that states, not federal regulators, should oversee sports-event contracts. Its brief says more than half of all prediction-market trading volume on the first Sunday of this season, $1.8 billion of $3.3 billion, was on NFL events. An AP report quotes the league saying states are better positioned to oversee these contracts "given the current landscape." The case is pending: according to a legal tracker, Kalshi's response isn't due until Nov. 9, and the Court hasn't scheduled it for conference. A league source told ESPN the NFL would accept a federal framework if it gave the same regulatory approach as states.

My take

Strip out the legal citations, and you have a question about who is allowed to profit from the betting boom.

There's a respectable case for the NFL's position. A player holding equity in a company that lists contracts on his own games has a conflict of interest, or at least looks like one. The NFL has its own official sportsbook partners (DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics, per FOS), so it isn't anti-gambling. It argues prediction markets lack the integrity infrastructure of regulated sportsbooks.

But follow the money in a different direction. Leagues across sports have turned betting into a revenue stream. The athlete, whose performance is the product being priced, can end up being the only party treated as a risk. In 2023, agent Blake Baratz called the NFL's ban on players promoting sports betting "fairly hypocritical," per FOS. You don't have to agree with him to notice the pattern: the integrity rule applies most firmly to the person with the least power.

Barkley, for what it's worth, doesn't complain about anything I found. He describes it as a rule he follows. That may be the most telling part: the limits on what a player can own are set before he gets a say, and accepting them is part of the job.

So here's the question: if leagues can sell the integrity of the game to prediction markets, should players be allowed to buy into them, or should the line be drawn at the athlete?