By Nick Devor and Bill Alpert
Polymarket can now offer event contracts to traders through brokerage firms, the prediction market announced on Tuesday.
Its return to the U.S. was authorized by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator that oversees the growing prediction market business.
"With this approval, Polymarket will be able to onboard brokerages and customers directly and facilitate trading on U.S. venues," the company said in a press release.
In a post on X, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan called it "a key milestone for permeating the U.S. financial system."
Event contracts, also known as binary options, are built around yes/no questions such as "will the Fed cut rates again this year?"
Polymarket had been banned from operating in the U.S. since 2022 when it let customers buy those contracts without getting approval from the CFTC.
Its prediction market rival Kalshi has been operating in the U.S. as a CFTC-licensed exchange since July 2021. Kalshi won a lawsuit against the regulator in 2024 that allowed it to list event contracts based on political events.
Kalshi's event contracts for the 2024 presidential election brought prediction markets into the cultural mainstream. It has since partnered with Robinhood, which offers Kalshi event contracts on its brokerage platform.
Today's approval from the CFTC allows Polymarket to establish its own partnerships with firms like Robinhood.
Polymarket is still waiting for additional approvals that will allow American users to buy event contracts directly from the prediction market. But Tuesday's CFTC approval is likely to hasten that timeline.
Kalshi and other prediction market platforms like Crypto.com have expanded into event contracts based on the outcome of sporting events, putting pressure on the gambling industry.
The stocks of sports betting titans DraftKings and FanDuel-parent Flutter have been dragged down by the rise of prediction markets' rise, pushing both sportsbooks to unveil prediction market plans of their own.
The gambling industry is divided over whether sports event contracts count as sports bets, subject to state regulations and taxes.
The CFTC, which has been operating with an acting-head since January, hasn't made its position clear on the topic. Michael Selig, President Donald Trump's nominee to chair the CFTC, declined to answer questions during his recent Senate confirmation hearing, deferring to pending court decisions in several lawsuits.
This past week, the CFTC extended its noncommittal approach in a letter to a bipartisan group of seven senators. The group includes Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada, where gambling has been regulated by the state for a century, and Republican John Curtis from Utah, where gambling is banned. In September, they asked the CFTC how it was regulating the sports contracts.
"The [CFTC] is implicitly permitting sports gaming products that are regulated by states and tribes," they wrote.
In the new letter, Pham said: "CFTC investigations are nonpublic and confidential." She referred to a Sept. 30 memo -- the agency's first and only discussion of sports contracts -- in which the CFTC takes no view and says that providers of event contracts assume the risk that courts could outlaw their products.
The most substantial answers in the CFTC's response addressed how the agency allows event contract makers to regulate themselves. The market operators have registered over 1,900 new prediction contracts this year -- on matters of sports and other topics -- with the operators self-certifying that they are preventing market manipulation and protecting market participants. Pham mentions no agency involvement.
Sen. Cortez Masto, remains unhappy with the agency's hands-off approach. "The CFTC's response is underwhelming and shows either their inability or unwillingness to take their mission of regulating prediction markets seriously," the senator's office said on Tuesday.
The CFTC's decision is only the latest in a spree of institutional stamps of approval that Polymarket has won this year. In October, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange invested $2 billion in Polymarket. Two weeks later the National Hockey League brought Polymarket and Kalshi on as the league's official prediction market partners, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship announced a similar partnership with Polymarket earlier this month.
Write to Nick Devor at nicholas.devor@barrons.com and Bill Alpert at william.alpert@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 26, 2025 02:30 ET (07:30 GMT)
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