NCAA President Charlie Baker
In a letter sent to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael S. Selig, Baker requested the suspension of all college sport prediction markets until appropriate regulations are established, warning that current operations pose "significant threats" to both student welfare and fair competition.
"Just as we need Congress to stabilize eligibility, we need federal regulators to stabilize these markets," Baker said. "The answer cannot be the status quo. We need one set of fair, transparent standards."
The NCAA's concerns center on what Baker describes as the functional equivalence between prediction markets and sports wagering. Prediction market operators now offer collegiate sports moneyline, total and spread markets that mirror traditional sports betting platforms, with major sports wagering and daily fantasy operators recently announcing their entry into the prediction marketplace.
Baker outlined seven critical safeguards he says are missing from current prediction market operations. Chief among them are age restrictions—prediction markets often allow 18-year-old participants, while most states limit sports wagering to those 21 and older. This lower age threshold could expose college and high school students to potentially addictive gambling behaviors, Baker argued.
The letter also highlights the absence of advertising restrictions on college campuses, robust integrity monitoring systems, and requirements for prediction market operators to coordinate with governing bodies like the NCAA on new market offerings and suspicious activity reporting. Baker specifically cited recent operator attempts to launch markets around college Transfer Portal activity as evidence of inadequate oversight that could create "catastrophic risks to student-athletes and consumers alike."
Additional concerns include the potential expansion of proposition betting markets focused on individual player performance, which Baker has consistently opposed due to their negative impact on student-athletes. He noted that at his urging, most states now restrict such markets for college contests.
Baker also pointed to harassment of student-athletes by those engaged in betting as a mental health concern that requires protective measures, including cross-platform bans for participants who harass athletes.
Since the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, the NCAA has developed what it describes as a comprehensive sports betting harm reduction program. This includes educating hundreds of thousands of student-athletes about wagering dangers, monitoring more than 23,000 contests annually for suspicious activity, and conducting research while advocating on behalf of the association's 1,100-plus member schools and 500,000-plus student-athletes.
The NCAA expressed willingness to work with the CFTC to develop a regulatory framework that would allow prediction markets to operate with appropriate protections for student-athletes, consumers and college sports competitions.
