Impassioned plea
NCAA President Charlie Baker has written to the new Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Michael Selig, begging him to suspend all college sports-linked prediction market products.
a more robust system with appropriate safeguards
“I implore you,” Baker wrote Selig, asking him to pause the markets “until a more robust system with appropriate safeguards is in place.”
The NCAA chief told the CFTC chair that “the growth and haphazard nature of collegiate sport prediction markets” posed a clear threat to the well-being of student-athletes and the integrity of college sport.
Baker’s letter listed a number of safeguards missing from prediction markets, including bans on prop bets.
Growing threat
Baker used the NCAA’s sports betting harm reduction program to contrast what was missing from the prediction market vertical. Baker stated the college body was monitoring more than 23,000 contests per year for suspicious activity and advocating for “1,100-plus member schools and 500,000-plus student-athletes.”
Baker told Selig how sports-linked prediction markets are missing multiple critical safeguards, including restrictions on age, ads, and prop bets and adequate sport integrity monitoring.
The NCAA told Selig the latter was “nuanced and requires heightened levels of review that don’t exist in many prediction markets.”
Baker’s letter followed immediately after his annual State of College Sports address at the 2026 NCAA Convention in Washington DC, where he said the prediction market threat “was about to get worse” while calling out Kalshi.
we called them out and they backed down”
“So-called prediction markets are offering what anyone can see is unregulated betting on college games.” Baker added that Kalshi was about to start taking bets on where student-athletes might transfer to: “until we called them out and they backed down.”
Appeal for balance
Baker told the NCAA audience in DC that the college body needed the CFTC to stabilize the prediction market vertical.
The NCAA boss said that’s why he wrote to the federal regulator, and now hopes the CFTC will pause “all college sport commodities offerings until the agency can develop the same regulations that legal sportsbooks operate under.”
one set of fair, transparent standards”
“Whether it’s transfer windows or prop bets, the answer cannot be the status quo. We need one set of fair, transparent standards.”
