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Sports prediction market Novig has secured designation from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Designated Contract Market (DCM), clearing the way for the company to operate as a federally regulated exchange and roll out across all 50 states from this summer.
The designation places Novig within the same federal framework that governs derivatives exchanges, allowing it to list event contracts nationwide rather than navigating the patchwork of state sports betting and sweepstakes rules under which it previously operated. Novig described the approval as one of the fastest of its kind in CFTC history.
What changes under federal oversight
Operating as a DCM, Novig will be able to apply safeguards more commonly associated with financial markets, including market surveillance, protections against manipulation and insider activity, and broader compliance standards. The platform retains a 21-plus age requirement and says it is built around responsible participation at scale.
Novig runs an exchange-based, peer-to-peer model rather than the against-the-house structure of a traditional sportsbook. Customers trade directly with one another, with pricing set by real-time supply and demand through an order book. The company argues this removes unfair odds and the punitive limits that sportsbooks often place on consistently winning customers.
"From day one, our vision has been to operate within a single national framework that raises the standard for the entire category," said Jacob Fortinsky, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Novig. "By aligning incentives with users and removing the structural disadvantages of legacy betting platforms, we're building a fundamentally different model where participants aren't playing against the house, but operating within a fair and transparent market."
Traction and positioning
Novig says it has surpassed USD 5 billion in cumulative trading volume, and positions itself as the most liquid and efficient sports prediction market in the country. The company has moved through several operating models since launch, beginning as a licensed betting exchange in New Jersey and Colorado before pivoting to a sweepstakes model, and now to a federally regulated exchange. Its Series B round earlier this year, led by Pantera Capital, valued the business at roughly 500 million dollars post-money.
How Novig sits alongside Kalshi
Novig now joins a growing group of CFTC-designated exchanges competing for prediction market volume. Prediction market exchange Kalshi has held DCM status since 2020 and began offering sports event contracts in January 2025, while Crypto.com, Polymarket and Robinhood have also moved into the space. Kalshi remains a broad-market venue spanning politics, economics, weather and culture alongside sports, whereas Novig is built exclusively around sports, which makes the two direct competitors specifically in sports event trading.
That competition sits on contested legal ground. In April 2026 the Third Circuit became the first federal appeals court to hold that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts state gambling laws as applied to sports event contracts traded on a CFTC-registered DCM, a ruling that strengthens the federal model Novig is now entering. Several states continue to challenge the exchanges, and the CFTC has separately proposed rules that would bar certain sports contracts, such as those tied to player injuries or officiating outcomes.
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