The age that lets someone bet on football through a prediction market is three years younger than the age that lets them do it at a sportsbook.
Users between 18 and 20 years old traded an estimated $5.4 billion on Kalshi so far this year, according to a CNN analysis published 28 August.
That’s legal because prediction markets are regulated federally as financial products under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which sets no minimum age above 18.
However, sports and parlays make up roughly 80% of Kalshi’s overall volume, and much of that trading looks like sports betting where the age bar is set at 21.
A Backdoor for the Industry
The American Gaming Association, the casino industry’s lobbying group, has cited Kalshi’s youth trading figures as part of its broader campaign to have sports event contracts regulated as sports betting rather than financial products.
“Most parents and grandparents don’t realise that the ‘prediction markets’ are offering a backdoor into sports-betting in jurisdictions where the legal betting age is 21,” AGA president Bill Miller told CNN.
The age gap is one argument in a wider fight: Kalshi also faces separate federal-court challenges over how event contracts should be classified, backed by 44 state attorneys general, dozens of tribal gaming authorities and the casino industry.
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Three Platforms, Two Age Strategies
Not every platform uses the federal minimum. Novig and Fanatics’ prediction-markets business have both voluntarily set their own age floor at 21, even though CFTC rules would allow them to accept users from 18.
Fanatics has presented its decision as a general principle, saying that 21 is the appropriate minimum age for any activity involving real money.
Novig has connected its limit more directly to its relationships with sports organisations. CEO Jacob Fortinsky told CNN that the company had listened to concerns raised by the NCAA and professional leagues and wanted to remain a “good partner” to them.
These explanations point to two distinct rationales: a company-wide position on real-money products at Fanatics and a league-focused reputational policy at Novig. Neither company has described the restriction as a condition for obtaining state sports-betting licences.
Whether voluntary restraint eventually produces a regulatory or commercial advantage remains untested. For now, it excludes customers who are generating billions of dollars in volume on a competing platform.
The Age Limit Could Still Change
Two separate efforts are underway to raise that age to 21, and neither has succeeded so far.
The first is at the CFTC itself. The agency's own proposed rule on prediction markets did not include an age change and kept the minimum at 18.
During the public comment period, which closed 27 July, the NCAA, NFL, NBA and PGA Tour each submitted comments urging the CFTC to raise the minimum specifically for sports event contracts to 21, arguing the risk of financial harm to 18-to-20-year-olds is comparable to the risk from sports betting.
The CFTC is still reviewing those comments and could issue a final rule as proposed, revise it, or not complete the rulemaking at all; no decision date has been set.
The second is in Congress, and is unrelated to the CFTC process. A bill called the Prediction Markets Security and Integrity Act of 2026 (S. 4060) is still pending.
If passed in its current form, it would raise the federal minimum from 18 to 21 across prediction markets, and would also tie a platform's ability to operate in a state to a state-approved wagering programme with federal sign-off.
