
The NFL Brings DraftKings and FanDuel Back and Locks Out Prediction Markets
The league confirmed three multi-year sportsbook deals on Thursday, five months after the category emptied. The most consequential line is the one about who is not in them.
Search

The league confirmed three multi-year sportsbook deals on Thursday, five months after the category emptied. The most consequential line is the one about who is not in them.

PL 5153/2026 would repeal the law that created Brazil's regulated market, extinguish every authorisation regardless of its stated term, and make operating fixed-odds betting a crime carrying two to five years. It reached the Mesa on Monday afternoon.

Two filings lodged with the CFTC on Tuesday turn individual NFL player availability into federally listed event contracts, trading from Thursday with no position limits. The legal argument for why they comply is sealed.

Two years after splitting itself in half to become a pure technology supplier, GiG is paying €16.4 million for a majority stake in an African operator, funded by an €8.5 million raise it launched the same morning it reported an operating loss of €6.9 million.

The Dodgers, Red Sox, Braves, Padres and Giants are Kalshi partners, and had been for weeks before anyone said so. Three of the five are in California, where no state lawsuit has been filed and the lobbying has already started.

The Bank of Russia has widened who counts as a qualified investor days before the regulated market opens, adding a route through domestic exam certificates. Everyone else gets Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and a ceiling of about $3,800 a year.

Forensic work on more than 400 seized devices has turned an illegal online gambling investigation into an organised crime case spanning continents. Court documents allege contact with senior politicians, police and immigration officials. Nobody in those categories has been named or charged.

The vote was close to unanimous on the shares, and the scheme now needs only the Gibraltar court. It puts William Hill, 888 and Mr Green into the same group as Bally's Intralot's lottery and gaming technology business, with completion expected late this year or early next.

France's state-controlled horseracing monopoly PMU has signed a technology agreement with BetMakers to extend its pool and fixed-odds betting services internationally, a deal that arrives as BetMakers completes its AU$267m acquisition by Tabcorp and builds out a growing roster of global operator partnerships.

Twenty-eight Chicago alderpersons have formally demanded that Mayor Brandon Johnson order Bally's to resume full construction at its River West casino site, warning of potential legal action after the operator cited VGT legalisation as grounds to slow work on the hotel, event centre and restaurants. At least one council member suspects the real issue is cash flow.

Tabcorp has struck a AU$283 million deal to buy cloud-native platform BetMakers, with executives telling analysts it was the cheapest, fastest, and lowest-risk path to modernising a technology estate built on ageing on-premises infrastructure. Annual cost synergies of up to AU$30 million are projected within two years.

iGaming Real Talk has announced the sixth edition of Real Roadshow 2026, with 11 full-length podcasts and more than 35 short-form videos recorded on the iGB LIVE London expo floor.

Tabcorp has signed a binding scheme of arrangement for the wagering technology group it walked away from in February, and it is paying a 41% premium to get it. The price of the delay is written into the terms.

LeoVegas Group has brought its proprietary Tiger sportsbook to the United Kingdom, deploying it simultaneously across three brands in one of the world's most competitive regulated betting markets. The move completes the platform's rollout through Denmark, Brazil and Sweden and marks the group's most consequential statement yet of intent to own its own technology stack.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has filed a constitutional challenge to Wisconsin's newly enacted tribal-only online sports betting law, arguing the legislature exceeded its authority and that the tribal-exclusive model violates equal-protection principles. The outcome could reshape how the hub-and-spoke framework is tested across the country.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has taken the state's $36 billion lawsuit against Kalshi to social media, accusing the prediction market operator of "turning cancer patients into prop bets" over its FDA drug-approval contracts. Kalshi's co-founder fired back within hours, and Harvard Medical School researchers have separately asked the CFTC to ban the markets entirely.

The Netherlands Gaming Authority has renewed Holland Casino Online's licence for a further five years from October 2026, confirming the state-backed operator's continued place in the regulated Dutch market even as a 37.8% GGR tax rate squeezes its margins and the broader industry warns of channelisation risk.

Flutter's outgoing CEO Peter Jackson has confirmed FanDuel is content to act as a futures commission merchant directing users to third-party exchanges, positioning the operator ahead of a proposed CFTC rule that would restrict the market-making activities of exchange-affiliated firms. The strategy is forecast to generate $50 million this year, even as overall US performance falls short of plan.

Light & Wonder has made de-leveraging its balance sheet the company's overriding priority after its second-quarter earnings call, with CFO Oliver Chow setting a target of three times cash flow by mid-2027. The shift signals a strategic recalibration for the gaming supplier after years of acquisition-driven growth, and puts share buybacks firmly on the back burner for the remainder of 2026.

Three live bills in the 119th Congress are pulling federal policy on prediction markets in opposite directions: one would create a dedicated regulatory framework, while two others would reclassify event contracts as gambling outright. The outcome will determine whether platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket operate as financial exchanges or face state-level enforcement.