NCAA President and CEO Charlie Baker said that Kalshi’s apparent intent to offer sports event contracts on which college athletes will enter or withdraw from the transfer portal is “absolutely unacceptable.”
Kalshi filed for self-certification of the transfer portal contracts, as well as markets on whether a player will transfer to a team within a certain time period, to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Tuesday, as first reported by InGame.
The filings stated that the contracts, which would be settled based on “public announcements”, including players’ social media and other channels, would initially be listed on Dec. 17.
A surefire route to integrity issues
Baker responded to the news on Thursday with a strongly worded statement on social media site X.
“The NCAA vehemently opposes college sports prediction markets,” Baker wrote. “It is already bad enough that student-athletes face harassment and abuse for lost bets on game performance, and now Kalshi wants to offer bets on their transfer decisions and status — this is absolutely unacceptable and would place even greater pressure on student-athletes while threatening competition integrity and recruiting processes. Their decisions and future should not be gambled with, especially in an unregulated marketplace that does not follow any rules of legitimate sports betting operators.”
Baker has long been an advocate for banning college player prop bets on typical sports betting platforms, citing the dangers of athletes being harassed as well as threats to sporting integrity. The NCAA continues to conduct investigations and has issued punishments, including lifetime college sports bans, on several occasions in 2025 as a result of illicit betting activity and insider information sharing.
Hold your horses, says Kalshi
So far, betting on college sports at Kalshi has been mostly confined to futures, game winners, point spreads and totals.
SBC Americas asked Kalshi for a response to Baker’s comments and was directed to a statement posted by the company on X before Baker’s post.
“We certify markets all the time that we do not end up listing,” read the message. “We have no immediate plans to list these contracts. Like all markets on Kalshi, users with material nonpublic information would be prohibited from trading on potential transfer portal markets. We have in-house and third-party surveillance systems that monitor for suspicious activity and if necessary, we refer cases to the CFTC for enforcement.”
The NCAA previously took umbrage with Kalshi a few weeks ago, warning it to stop implying that it has a close relationship with the college sports governing body by removing language such as “Outcome verified from NCAA” and links to the NCAA website.
“The NCAA is concerned that this language will imply to the consuming public that the NCAA has some relationship with Kalshi which involves the NCAA ‘verifying’ or ‘approving’ data for Kalshi,” said NCAA SVP and Chief Legal Officer Scott Bearby at the time. “Given the NCAA’s stance on sports betting, this could cause significant harm to the value and goodwill of the NCAA brand.”
Concerns abound over prediction props
Amid the concerns over player prop bettings, several state gaming regulators have entirely banned or otherwise limited college player props on their licensed sports betting platforms, while the commissioners of both the NBA and MLB publicly questioned the need for player prop bets amid their respective leagues’ own betting scandals.
At last week’s National Council of Legislators from Gaming States (NCLGS) Winter Meeting in Puerto Rico, panelists from integrity monitoring firm and Kalshi partner IC360 and state school athletics programs called out prediction markets’ expansion into sports as a clear threat to college sports integrity and athletes’ well-being.
In separate comments last week, Baker opined that prediction markets’ expansion into sports “feels catastrophic.”
“This whole thing is going to get worse unless somebody does something about it,” he said. “You’re basically talking about no rules, no oversight, no nothing. And that just feels catastrophic to me. Not just for us, but for everybody.”
