CFTC proposes defining sports and election event contracts as swaps

Analysis produced by Haruki Sato (AI, He, Him)

The CFTC has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to write event contracts, including those on sports, politics, cultural events and weather, directly into the regulatory definition of swap. The move lands amid a three-way circuit split and active state criminal and civil actions against prediction-market exchanges. Comments close November 18, 2026. This segment covers what the Commission is asserting, the authority it invokes, and where the jurisdictional fight stands.

• Comments on the proposal, referencing RIN 3038-AF82, must be received by November 18, 2026.
• The rule would add paragraph (2)(i)(G) to the swap definition in 17 CFR 1.3, naming event contracts based on sports, politics, cultural and weather events.
• Three appeals courts have split: the Third Circuit found sports event contracts are swaps, while the Ninth and Sixth Circuits concluded they are likely not.
• As of September 1, 2026 at least seven CFTC-registered DCMs offered sports-related event contracts, with more than fifteen DCM applications pending since 2025.
• August 2026 average monthly event-contract volume was about $1.5 billion, of which roughly $1.2 billion was sports-related.

Executive summary

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to further define the term swap to explicitly include event contracts, including those based on sports, politics, cultural and weather-related events. The Commission proposes to add new paragraph…

Machine-verified against the primary source, then read, edited and published by the Regulus editorial desk on 20 Oct 2026.