Polymarket Pulls NFL Contracts, Certifies Bitcoin Bets The Same Day

Two Filings Out, Three Crypto Products In

Polymarket US listed and quickly scrapped a duo of NFL-focused Player Participation Contracts filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Aug. 25, despite having told the agency it intended to list the product no earlier than Aug. 27.

These were similar to the sort of contract the CFTC’s June framework deemed likely contrary to public interest: contracts on player injuries, officiating outcomes, discrete in-game actions such as a specific pitch or shot by a named player, physical altercations, and pre-collegiate sporting events. The certification letter was signed by Nick Rice, the exchange’s head of markets. On Aug. 26, the commission’s product registry recorded the product as withdrawn, per records retrieved as of writing this article.

On the same day of the withdrawal, three crypto products went in. The registry records the exchange certifying separate bitcoin, ether, and solana price contracts on Aug. 26, each in the same paired form and each classified, like the withdrawn NFL entries, as a swap in the binary option subcategory.

Withdrawing certified event contracts is not new for the exchange. The registry shows it pulled tennis exact score contracts and NCAA player next team contracts on June 26, and shipping traffic statistic contracts on June 25. No reason is recorded for any of them, and none is recorded for the NFL filings. Polymarket US has published no explanation: its market notices page carries 14 exchange notices since July 28, covering maintenance windows and referral programs, and none mentions the withdrawal.

The exchange uses the word itself: the class certification for the NFL product certifies “a class of swaps for listing on the Exchange,” and asserts that each swap “is based upon an excluded commodity specified in § 40.2(d)(1)” – the statutory category that brings a contract within the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction.

The NFL contracts’ terms were drafted to avoid settling on an injury; it appears in the eligibility section instead. The payout condition is met if Mahomes “participates in at least one play,” as recorded in the NFL’s official gamebook and play-by-play records. The filing states that “pre-event injury reports, availability designations, active or inactive roster listings, projected or published lineups, and similar pre-event announcements are not determinative of the Contract Outcome.”

Alongside players, coaches, and club staff, the terms bar “club medical staff, athletic trainers, and other personnel with access to nonpublic injury, health, or availability information,” anyone at a settlement source with pre-publication access to the data, participants in “any pre-release lock-up, embargo, or advance-access arrangement,” and household members and immediate family of all of the above.

The exchange’s argument for why the product complies with the law is not public. Attachment B, described in the cover letter as the “concise explanation and analysis” demonstrating compliance with the Commodity Exchange Act and the designated contract market core principles, was filed under a separate petition seeking confidential treatment under the Freedom of Information Act. Rice requested that it be withheld “in perpetuity” because disclosure would reveal trade secrets and grant competitors an unfair advantage. It is not known what prompted the withdrawal a day after, and whether Polymarket US aims to relist similar contracts in the future.

The prediction market’s other sports filing from Aug. 25 survived. NFL American Football Starter Designation Contracts, tickers SDCNFL and SDCNFLD, remain certified according to the registry as of writing, as do next cabinet position departure and next world leader departure contracts filed the same day.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan is one of 35 members of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee, which held its first meeting on Aug. 20 with prediction markets on the agenda alongside crypto assets and artificial intelligence.