Barkley sells Polymarket stake as NFL restricts prediction market ties

Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley has sold his stake in Polymarket after the NFL told him to unload the investment, he told Front Office Sports in an interview reported by iGaming Business.

Barkley, a three-time Pro Bowler, said the guidance came from the league ahead of the current regular season. "I was in it before, but no bueno," he said.

The move contrasts with the NBA's all-time leading scorer LeBron James, who signed with Polymarket last month after his contract with DraftKings expired, joining a roster of celebrity endorsers that includes Eli Manning, Derek Jeter and Spike Lee.

While the NFL continues to resist proposed US Commodity Futures Trading Commission rules on sports event contracts, the NBA took the opposite approach this week, signing a memorandum of understanding with the CFTC. The agreement designates Kalshi and Polymarket as the league's preferred prediction market partners and gives the NBA power to veto contracts it finds objectionable.

Kalshi's regulatory position elsewhere has grown more precarious. More than a dozen states have sued the company as federal circuit courts remain divided over whether sports event contracts count as swaps.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown escalated that fight on 29 October with a criminal complaint naming Kalshi chief executive Tarek Mansour and chief operating officer Luana Lopes Lara as defendants. The filing followed an undercover agent placing 12 sports trades on the platform totalling $114.87, and came less than two weeks after Utah sued Kalshi, describing gambling as a "public nuisance" causing "substantial harm" to state residents.

The two executives face 12 counts of online gaming promotion and a single count of pattern of unlawful activity. A Kalshi spokesperson rejected the action: "This is a crazy overreach; Utah is clearly playing politics." The spokesperson added separately: "We look forward to putting a stop to this."

The legal pressure has not slowed Kalshi's fundraising. The company closed a $1 billion funding round on Thursday at a $40 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management. That figure represents an 81.8% rise since Kalshi was valued at $22 billion in May, and a dramatic jump from roughly $5 billion in October 2025.

Polymarket, meanwhile, spent nearly four hours offline on Thursday after a security breach drained funds from hundreds of accounts on its offshore exchange. Tracking firms Bitquery and Arkham said hackers removed about $2.73 million from roughly 737 accounts within an hour.

Polymarket attributed the intrusion to a flaw in DebugBear, a third-party monitoring service, and wrote on X: "Anyone who has been impacted will be made whole."

Most affected accounts belonged to retail traders, with about two in five losing less than $100 and a median loss of $171. Four accounts each lost more than $100,000, together accounting for 43% of affected accounts, according to Bitquery. Polymarket said at least 689 affected accounts had been fully refunded as of Friday afternoon and that it was cooperating with law enforcement on an active investigation.

The run of events underscores how unevenly prediction markets are being treated across US sports leagues and states even as the sector's largest operators attract record investment.