The NCAA said Thursday it was "deeply concerned" about the lack of guardrails for the online prediction markets that are challenging betting industry norms after financial company Robinhood began allowing trades on college football.
Robinhood announced Tuesday that it was launching markets on the outcomes of professional and college football games this season. The company said in a release that it will allow customers to trade on the outcomes of every NFL game and every college game involving schools from the Power 4 conferences and independents. A market on the winner of Saturday's Iowa State-Kansas State game was open for trading Thursday night. Robinhood also offered a market on the Heisman Trophy winner.
Robinhood's move is in partnership with the financial exchange Kalshi, which earlier in the week began offering trading on college football point spreads and over/under totals on its own site. Prediction markets have emerged over the past year and are competing with traditional sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel in the evolving U.S. betting market.
Robinhood and Kalshi claim they fall under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency, and not state gambling regulators, which oversee the sportsbooks.
The NCAA believes companies offering markets on college athletics outside of state regulatory bodies "pose a threat to competition integrity and student-athlete safety," according to a statement by Tim Buckley, a senior vice president for the NCAA.
"We will continue to analyze developments of this market and work with industry leaders to help ensure guardrails and regulations to protect NCAA competition, student-athletes, coaches and officials," Buckley said.
Robinhood vice president JB Mackenzie told ESPN that the company believes the federal regulations they operate under do provide the necessary guardrails.
"Federal regulations provide important customer protections and market integrity safeguards, and we do not believe that these event contracts threaten competition integrity or student-athlete safety," he said.
The rise of prediction markets, with their nationwide access, has prompted DraftKings and FanDuel, the two leading sportsbook companies, to position themselves to enter the sector. FanDuel announced this week that it was partnering with CME Group, a derivatives marketplace, to "develop new fully funded, event-based contracts with defined risk."
Robinhood filed a suit this week against gambling regulators in New Jersey and Nevada to prevent the states from taking action to block their sports markets. Kalshi is also in the middle of legal battles with state regulators in multiple states. For now, the companies continue to offer event contracts on sports outcomes as football season kicks off.