Kalshi customers traded more contracts on Jeremiyah Love going third in the NFL draft than on any other player, most of them on draft day. Arizona and Massachusetts are reviewing betting tied to the Ryan Gold case at the sportsbooks they license, but no regulator has publicly confirmed an examination of prediction market trading on the draft.
Customers of Kalshi, the federally regulated prediction market, traded 598,464 contracts on Jeremiyah Love being the third pick in the 2026 NFL draft, more than on any other player, according to Kalshi’s public market data. Nearly three-quarters of that contract volume came on April 23, the night the Arizona Cardinals took Love third.
Gaming regulators in Arizona and Massachusetts are reviewing betting at the sportsbooks they license in connection with Ryan Gold, the suspended Cardinals scouting director whom the NFL accused of sharing the team’s draft plans.
Kalshi and Polymarket, the other prediction market that listed the pick, are not licensed by those state gaming regulators, and no regulator has said publicly that it is examining their draft trading.
The NFL told the Supreme Court on Oct. 8 that states should be allowed to regulate such markets. Meanwhile, no decision has been announced on Gold’s appeal of his suspension.
How Kalshi’s NFL Draft Prediction Market Worked
Kalshi’s “Pro Football #3 Overall Pick” market listed a separate contract on each of 38 players. A contract paid $1 if its player went third and nothing otherwise, so its price in cents can be interpreted as the market-implied probability of that player being selected. A 24-cent price corresponds to an implied probability of approximately 24%, although market prices do not establish the actual likelihood of an outcome.
Across the 38 players, 2.3 million contracts traded. Love’s 598,464 were 26% of them, ahead of Arvell Reese at 528,023. Gambling Insider reviewed all 11,157 trades in the Love contract. Most contracts changed hands for well under $1, so the sum of reported transaction prices multiplied by contract quantities was approximately $231,000, according to Gambling Insider’s analysis.
On Polymarket, the other prediction market that listed the pick, Love’s contract drew $36,143 of the $141,295 traded across all players in its market on the third pick, or 26%. Kalshi’s estimated transaction value was more than six times Polymarket’s reported dollar volume, although the figures should only be treated as directly comparable if both platforms calculate trading volume on the same basis.
Most of the Trading Came in the Final Four Days
Trading was thin for most of the market’s three months: no day before April 20 saw more than 10,000 Love contracts traded.
- From March 31 through Sunday, April 19, Love’s contract averaged 11 cents, about an 11% market-implied probability.
- It closed at 21 cents on Monday, April 20, 24 cents on April 21 and 32 cents on April 22.
- On draft day it traded mostly between 31 and 46 cents through the afternoon.
Of all Love contracts, 88% traded from April 20 to April 23 and 72% on draft day. That includes 9% traded after the pick was known, at prices near 99 cents. Half of all Love contracts traded on draft day before 8 p.m. ET.
The concentration of volume near the draft shows how sharply trading activity increased as the outcome approached. It does not, by itself, indicate that traders had advance knowledge of the selection.
What the Prices Show, and What They Cannot
Kalshi’s public records show that Love’s contract continued trading well below 99 cents shortly before a sharp price increase on draft night. They do not establish what individual traders knew about the selection.
In the last full minute before the jump, starting at 8:21 p.m. ET, the contract traded between 26 and 45 cents, last at 27 cents. At 8:22:36 p.m., it traded at 99 cents.
The timing of that transaction should be assessed against the precise moment the Cardinals’ selection became public. A move to 99 cents after the announcement would be consistent with the market responding to a known outcome.
Kalshi’s price also differed from reported sportsbook odds shortly before the draft. Sportsbooks had Love at about 2-1 two days before the draft, ESPN reported, odds that imply about a 33% chance.
Kalshi’s contract closed that day at 24 cents. Earlier, on light trading, Kalshi’s Love price had risen to 20 cents in early March before falling back to single digits by mid-March.
The difference between the sportsbook odds and Kalshi’s closing price shows that the two markets assigned different implied probabilities to the outcome. It does not establish why those prices diverged or whether any participant possessed non-public information.
Kalshi’s public data does not identify who placed any trade, and Gambling Insider does not suggest that any trade was improper.
Regulators Are Reviewing Sportsbooks, Not Exchanges
Arizona’s Department of Gaming confirmed in July that it had been notified of the Gold case, ESPN reported, and told Gambling Insider last month that the matter was under preliminary review. Massachusetts regulators are examining unusual betting activity in the state, according to ESPN.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission told Gambling Insider last month that no licensee filed a suspicious-activity report on an NFL draft market in March or April.
The finding applies to Massachusetts licensees and does not establish whether suspicious activity occurred on prediction markets.
Both regulators oversee licensed sportsbooks, and neither licenses Kalshi. A federal judge blocked Arizona from enforcing its gambling laws against Kalshi in May, and an appeals court paused a Massachusetts order blocking its sports markets in February.
Kalshi answers to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal futures regulator, which has not said whether it has reviewed trading in draft contracts. The CFTC did not reply to our request for comment. A House Oversight Committee inquiry into prediction market insider trading has focused on nonpublic government information.
Kalshi polices insider trading itself. On March 24, it said IC360, one of two firms the NFL uses to monitor betting on its games and the draft, would screen its sports markets to block people involved in sports from trading on their leagues. Neither Kalshi nor IC360 has said whether that covered draft contracts. Genius Sports, the NFL’s other monitor, signed integrity deals with Kalshi and Polymarket in August, after the draft.
The existence of these monitoring arrangements does not establish whether the Love contract was reviewed or whether any trading was flagged.
Gold’s Appeal Is Still Undecided
On July 17, the NFL suspended Gold indefinitely, saying he gave confidential information about Arizona’s 2026 draft selections to others before they were announced and placed parlay bets on NFL and college games.
Gold denies the findings. His attorney, Mike Caspino, has said Gold did not know the picks and that the parlays were placed by his wife. His appeal was scheduled to be heard Sept. 23. As of Oct. 13, neither the NFL nor Caspino had announced a decision.
No one has publicly linked Gold to trading on Kalshi or Polymarket, and Gambling Insider does not suggest that he traded on either exchange.
The NFL’s Case for State Oversight
In March, the NFL wrote to Kalshi and Polymarket asking them to avoid contracts on outcomes that may be known in advance, such as draft picks. Kalshi’s draft markets kept trading, and 93% of Love contract volume was recorded after March 31. The precise proportion traded after the NFL sent its letters depends on the dates they were issued.
On Oct. 8, the league filed a brief supporting New Jersey regulators, who are asking the Supreme Court to review a federal appeals court ruling that let Kalshi offer sports contracts in the state. It argued that without league lists of prohibited bettors, exchanges “have no practical way to prevent trading by individuals with material non-public information.” Kalshi’s response to the petition is due Nov. 9.
What Remains Undisclosed
Kalshi’s trade records establish that Love attracted the highest contract volume in its third-pick market and that trading intensified sharply during draft week. They do not identify individual traders or establish whether any activity involved confidential information.
The public record does not show whether IC360 or Kalshi reviewed trading in the Love contract, whether either exchange shared draft trading data with the NFL or the CFTC, or whether the NFL’s investigation examined prediction market trading.
The NFL’s concerns center on the safeguards used to prevent prohibited trading, rather than the volume of trading alone.
Kalshi and Polymarket did not respond to our requests for comment.
Gambling Insider’s figures come from Kalshi’s public trade data for the KXNFLDRAFTPICK-26-3 market, pulled Oct. 8 and re-checked Oct. 13, and Polymarket’s public market page. Times are Eastern. Contract volume refers to the number of contracts traded, not the number of individual transactions or unique traders.
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