76ers become the first NBA team to sign a prediction market, naming Kalshi a partner while LeBron James is Polymarket’s $15 million face

It took four days. On Monday, Oct. 26, the NBA named Kalshi and Polymarket its preferred prediction market exchanges and opened the door for teams to sign deals of their own. On Friday, Oct. 30, the Philadelphia 76ers walked through it, announcing a multi-year partnership that makes Kalshi the team’s Official Prediction Market Partner. The Sixers are the first NBA team to name one.

Neither side disclosed the value or the length of the deal beyond “multi-year.” What the announcement did spell out is what Kalshi is buying, and it is not a sportsbook-style deal. There are no odds on the court and no betting lounge in the arena. For now, the partnership is built around content, promotions and the team’s app.

What Kalshi gets from the 76ers

The launch came on the night of Philadelphia’s Emirates NBA Cup opener against the Knicks. Kalshi paid for postgame SEPTA rides for fans leaving that game. Next is a poster series with local artists, the first of which the team posted on Friday night with Kalshi tagged. Kalshi customers will also be able to win free merchandise and concessions through the 76ers’ mobile app.

Beyond the launch promotions, Kalshi receives in-arena visibility, branded social content such as fan voting for the team’s Top Plays of the Month, and integrations across the 76ers app, mobile ticketing and other team-owned digital platforms.

“With Kalshi’s new league-wide relationship with the NBA, we saw an opportunity to build a first-of-its-kind team partnership focused on delivering new content, creativity and engagement for 76ers fans,” said Owen Morin, the team’s chief revenue officer of partnerships. “As we embark on a new season with palpable buzz and anticipation surrounding our team, we’re excited to work with Kalshi to create new, fun experiences for our fans.”

October ball 🏀@Kalshi pic.twitter.com/ohL5Or6sWD

— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) October 30, 2026

Why Philadelphia went first

On paper, the 76ers were not the obvious candidate. Pennsylvania legalized online sports betting years ago, and the team already has a sportsbook partner in BetMGM. The franchises with the most to gain from prediction markets are the ones that have never been able to sell a betting sponsorship at all.

The Sixers do have something no other team has. Their biggest star is already the face of the category. LeBron James signed a $15 million-a-year Polymarket endorsement in September, a deal worth close to four times his roughly $4 million salary with Philadelphia this season. Polymarket also has the podcast Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart host. The Sixers’ first prediction market deal went to Polymarket’s main rival.

That split is allowed. Players can endorse gaming companies as long as their deals promote wagering on other sports or the brand in general, and their pay cannot depend on NBA results. James promotes football markets, not basketball. Team deals now fall under the league’s new framework, which limits which NBA markets exchanges can list and bans team and league personnel from trading NBA contracts.

The 12 teams with the most to gain

The bigger market sits elsewhere. Twelve NBA teams play in states that have not legalized online sportsbooks: the Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, Kings, Rockets, Mavericks, Spurs, Thunder, Timberwolves, Bucks, Jazz and Hawks. The Heat and Magic play in Florida, where only one operator is licensed for online betting. Prediction markets run under federal rules in most of those states, which gives those teams a sponsor category they could not sell before.

The money is unlikely to match the sportsbook boom. In states that tied sportsbook licenses to team partnerships, some NBA deals topped $5 million a year. Baseball offers a rough comparison for prediction markets: after MLB opened its authorized-operator program in August, Kalshi signed the Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Braves and Red Sox, and Bill King reported that the Dodgers’ deal, the richest of them, is worth about $1.5 million a year, with the Giants and Padres at about half that.

What those teams can offer is airtime. Local broadcasts in non-betting states have never carried in-game odds. A prediction market could sponsor live win-probability graphics on a team’s telecast, a feature Polymarket has said it wants. “It’s intuitive to tell the story of where the public believes the game is going to end up,” said Ari Borod, Polymarket’s president of sports business development. National broadcasts are harder to crack, because the league’s TV partners already have exclusive sportsbook deals.

The legal risk that comes with the deals

Not every team is likely to follow quickly. Minnesota passed a law making it a felony to offer prediction markets. A federal judge has blocked the state from enforcing it, but the Timberwolves would be signing a sponsor their own legislature tried to criminalize. In Utah, home of the Jazz, prosecutors filed 14 criminal charges on Oct. 28 against Kalshi and its co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, over sports contracts traded in the state. California, home to four teams, is in the federal appeals circuit that ruled this year that Kalshi’s sports contracts are gambling. Texas, with three teams, is among the few states that did not join a letter to federal regulators arguing the opposite.

The league says its contracts account for that. Scott Kaufman-Ross, who negotiated the deals for the league, said the league is watching the court cases and that “the contracts address scenarios based on what happens there.”

The backlash, and what comes next

Reaction to the Philadelphia deal was loud. Replies to the announcement were full of fans questioning why a team would partner with a company that lets users trade on its games, coming a year after federal gambling charges against Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups. Morin pointed to the league’s integrity rules. “We want to do this in a really safe way, and we believe it’s regulated in a way where the integrity is upheld,” he said.

The next deals will show how big this becomes. Watch the Texas teams and the Hawks, which face the least political risk, and the California teams, which have the most to gain if the courts allow it. Philadelphia showed what an NBA team can sell a prediction market. Teams in non-betting states will show what it is worth.