The NBA signs Kalshi and Polymarket as its preferred prediction market partners

The NBA announced partnerships Monday with Kalshi and Polymarket, making them the league's preferred prediction market platforms. Both companies get official league data and the rights to use NBA marks and logos on their sites.

The league said the deals come with an integrity framework: more say over which markets get offered, information sharing, and a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator over prediction markets. The NBA also expanded its DraftKings agreement to cover that company's prediction market offering, ESPN reported.

The NBA follows MLB and the NHL into these partnerships. Scott Kaufman-Ross, an NBA executive vice president, told ESPN the league waited until it had a regulatory setup it trusted. "We were really just waiting for that moment where we felt like we had all of the proper pieces in place in order for us to get comfortable to move forward," he said.

Here is the part that makes this a fight. New York, home of the league office, is one of the states suing prediction markets and arguing they are illegal sports betting. New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to settle whether sports trading belongs to state gambling regulators or the federal government. The NFL, which has no prediction market partner, filed a brief this month backing New Jersey.

The NBA isn't picking a side in court. "We'll let the courts decide," Kaufman-Ross said. "The jurisdictional issue is not our issue. Our issue is the way that our game is impacted." He added that the contracts account for a scenario where the platforms lose the ability to offer sports markets.

So the NBA now has its logo on two platforms that New York, its home state, says are offering illegal sports betting. The NBA's bet is that official data and federal oversight make the markets easier to police. Critics will say it's a sponsorship check with a compliance memo attached.

What to watch: whether the Supreme Court takes the New Jersey case, and whether New York's lawsuit becomes an awkward problem for a league partnered with the companies it is suing.