Sports fans can now risk their money on whether the rain, rain will go away.
Kalshi has opened a new frontier for prediction markets by introducing bets on whether individual sporting events will have weather delays.
The company self-certified the weather delay category with its federal regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), in July 2025 but waited until two months ago to begin offering wagers. The CFTC has not pushed back, even though the bets seemingly contradict guardrails the agency recently advocated for in a proposed rule for prediction markets.
Kalshi’s new product tests the limits of the CFTC’s permissiveness while the agency actively defends its ability to oversee prediction markets in court. The CFTC hasn’t publicly contested any self-certified sports wager since it started permitting sports betting about 18 months ago.
Under the CFTC’s proposed rule for exchange betting on events, the agency can apply extra scrutiny to betting markets that involve “gaming”—a category that typically includes sports—by assessing whether they are contrary to the public interest.
