Kalshi chief executive Tarek Mansour said a new Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rule covering sports event contracts is close, days after a federal appeals court ruled the exchange’s sports products are bets under Nevada gaming law.
Speaking to RotoWire in his first interview since the ruling, Mansour said the current fight over Rule 40.11 of the Commodity Exchange Act will be overtaken by new rulemaking.
“A lot of the announcements centered on Rule 40.11 – but there is a new rule coming in the next few weeks or next few months that is going to clarify that,” Mansour said.
What the Ninth Circuit decided
On 28 August 2026, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled unanimously in Kalshi v. Nevada Gaming Control Board that the exchange’s sports event contracts are sports bets subject to Nevada gaming law, rather than swaps regulated federally under the Commodity Exchange Act. The opinion, written by Judge Ryan Nelson, rejected all three of Kalshi’s preemption arguments and dissolved the preliminary injunction that had kept Nevada regulators from enforcing state gaming law against the company.
The panel cited Kalshi’s own marketing, which described the platform as the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states, and said the company “has a gambling problem.”
The decision runs against the Third Circuit, which held in April 2026 that Kalshi’s contracts were federally regulated swaps shielded from New Jersey enforcement. That split between circuits is the direct route to a Supreme Court petition.
American Gaming Association chief executive Bill Miller called the Ninth Circuit ruling a “significant win for consumer protections and taxpayers.”
Mansour on the legal position
Mansour did not dispute that the ruling complicates Kalshi’s position across state lines.
“It added more legal uncertainty than there was before. It’s hard to argue with that,” he said.
Kalshi can seek a panel rehearing, an en banc review by the full Ninth Circuit, or take the case to the Supreme Court. Until one of those routes changes the position, Nevada can enforce its gaming law against the company’s sports contracts.
League agreements as the next lever
Mansour pointed to commercial deals with the major US leagues as the next development, saying an announcement is imminent.
“You should expect announcements very soon, at least from one of the two remaining major leagues,” he said.
Kalshi already has agreements with the National Hockey League (NHL) and five Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs. Rival Polymarket has struck deals with MLB and Major League Soccer (MLS). That leaves the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) as the two outstanding names.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said the league has been talking to prediction market operators since March about a possible agreement, and a framework is close. The NFL has taken the opposite line. Renie Anderson, the league’s executive vice president, said prediction markets are “not a space that we’re considering right now commercially.” The NFL instead added Fanatics to DraftKings and FanDuel as an official sportsbook partner.
League data and integrity deals matter to Kalshi beyond revenue. They give the exchange the same counterparties as licensed sportsbooks at a point when courts are being asked whether the two products are the same thing. Kalshi has been building that layer for months, including a multi-year data agreement with Sportradar.
Sportsbook operators keep up the pressure
Licensed operators have used the tax gap as their main line of attack. Circa Sports chief executive Derek Stevens called Kalshi “thieves” over its avoidance of state sports betting taxes, which licensed books pay on every handle dollar in the states where they hold licences.
Circa Sports director of operations Jeff Benson made the same point on X.
“Call it betting. Call it trading. Call it predicting…The customer is still putting money on whether a team covers,” Benson wrote.
Mansour’s answer was to point at the people using the product.
“Have you asked our users? Our users, the people that are actually trading?” he said.
Volume keeps growing while the law is unsettled
The legal argument is running alongside heavy growth. Prediction market volume passed $50bn in June, with Kalshi holding the largest share, and the company has been weighing a raise at a $40bn valuation alongside eventual IPO plans.
European regulators have moved faster than the US courts. Spain blocked both Kalshi and Polymarket in May on licensing grounds, treating their sports contracts as unlicensed gambling rather than trading.
Two things now decide how far Kalshi can push its sports product in the US: whether the CFTC rule Mansour described lands in the terms he expects, and whether the Supreme Court takes the circuit split. Neither is in the company’s hands, and Nevada can enforce against it in the meantime.
Source: Kalshi
