Prediction Markets Face Critical Fall as NFL Season and Midterms Converge

In 2024, event contract exchanges entered the mainstream with trades tied to the presidential election. In September 2025, the start of the NFL season marked the beginning of a surge in prediction market trading volume that has not slowed. Prediction markets began another NFL season on Wednesday night when the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks played a rematch of the 2026 Super Bowl. Labor Day also marked the start of the midterm election campaign season.

"You have a bit of a supercycle occurring right now within the prediction markets," Robinhood's general manager for futures and prediction markets, JB Mackenzie, said. Other events are also drawing interest, including economic contracts linked to the Federal Reserve's next interest rate move and the Major League Baseball playoffs in October.

Platforms have rushed to prepare. Seni Thomas, CEO of EDGE Markets, a financial technology company working in sports betting and prediction markets, said preparation will continue as long as sports offerings generate the majority of volume. Thomas said this NFL cycle is the real key and "make or break" for many newer companies.

Polymarket on Tuesday debuted an advertisement featuring basketball icon LeBron James, former New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning and former Yankee Derek Jeter as part of a football season marketing campaign. It also unveiled a new product for its U.S. exchange that allows users to talk, share and trade together on the platform.

Kalshi experienced a record $2.3 billion in volume traded on Saturday, the first day of college football, and unveiled a feature for speculators who participated in 2025 NFL season markets to track how they performed before this season's kickoff. It has also expanded partnerships with individual sports teams ahead of the MLB playoff season.

Both platforms suffered glitches as college football play began. Polymarket's U.S. platform was down much of Saturday, and accounts that experienced losses due to the outage were eventually refunded. Kalshi prematurely resolved a market on the University of Michigan game, paying traders as if underdog Western Michigan had pulled off an upset. Kalshi later corrected the Michigan result and paid out accordingly.

The platforms are leaning into sports while battling in court with states across the country that say sports-related event contracts amount to gambling and should fall under their regulatory purview rather than the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "We operate pursuant to the regulations of the CFTC, and we'll continue to do so, and continue to work with stakeholders to run a safe and trusted product," said Ari Borod, president of sports business development at Polymarket, in August before announcing a partnership with the New York Yankees.

New entrants are also trying to capitalize on the same sporting events. Rothera, a prediction market platform developed in a joint venture between Susquehanna International Group and Robinhood, saw volumes boom after going online in time for the FIFA World Cup over the summer. "Rolling out all these sports, that's a big lift," CEO Thomas Chippas said. "We've only been live since the last week of May ... We're going as fast as we can, as prudently we can."

Novig, a platform that only lists sports event contracts, started an NFL marketing campaign on Wednesday with an ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, one of the first celebrities to work with a smaller exchange. ProphetX, which launched in June focusing on sports-related event contracts, has revamped its consumer platform and focused on boosting liquidity during the NFL season. "Our revenue doubled from June to August," ProphetX co-founder and CEO Dean Sisun said in an interview. "I would love to see it four to 5x by the end of the year on a run rate basis … I really think we can do that."

Sisun said ProphetX, which features sports event contracts, is planning to launch midterm election-related offerings, according to CNBC.