Illegal sports betting was mainstreamed into fantasy sports, which gave way to legalized state sports betting, which paved the way for prediction markets. And now, those prediction markets, like Kalshi, Polymarket and Novig, have deals with sports leagues, just like the gambling companies.The simple truth is people like spending money to show how much they think they know about sports, for better or worse.So, what’s next in this evolution?Two Australian traders have figured out a way to combine the rush of a trading floor and their love of sports.Rhett Dinsdale and Leigh Taylforth’s company, FutureSports, has partnered with the CME Group to launch FutureSports Performance Indexes (FSPI), which turns sports teams’ statistics (and eventually athletes’) into “rules-based, benchmark financial indexes.” These indexes rise and fall over the course of a season based on the teams’ stats and performance. CME Group will provide the exchange to trade futures of the indexes.Soon, you’ll be able to go long on your favorite team and short your biggest rival. Or, if you’re the fan of a bad team, hedge your emotional trauma.“I’d really love to short the Mets as a Mets fan,” Tim McCourt, the senior managing director and global head of Equity, FX and Alternative Products at CME Group, said in a recent conversation with FutureSports and The Athletic.FutureSports is starting its business with the National Hockey League. It’s aiming for a Sept. 28 launch, pending regulatory review.More than point spreadsA recent Bloomberg story claimed that a large chunk of Gen Z investors see sports betting as a viable strategy to make money.Good luck with that. But those kinds of dreamers aren’t the customers FutureSports is looking for. Dummies bet parlays. FutureSports is targeting “sophisticated retail investors,” the kind of people who know their way around derivatives, instead of just point spreads. But it’s all connected.“The growth of prediction markets demonstrates genuine demand for exposure linked to sporting events, and we read that as evidence of investor interest,” Taylforth said in a recent interview with Structured Retail Products.Financial indexes and futures trading are a little more complex than sports betting or prediction markets. But since this is The Athletic and not Structured Retail Products, how would a retail investor take part?“A consumer can jump on and open a brokerage account,” Taylforth said, naming companies like early investor Robinhood, Plus500, Webull or NinjaTrader. “They have to understand how to trade derivatives. That’s a prerequisite because they’re complicated financial instruments, so you’ve got to have trading history here. But yeah, you can go long or short a team as you see fit.”Every team starts the season with a base index value of 7,500. After years of backtesting, FutureSports created a valuation table that will cause the value of the asset to fluctuate based on individual and team statistical performances. Different statistics are weighted based on scarcity, positively and negatively. In terms of in-season trading, customers can buy or sell contracts that expire monthly or quarterly. CME will offer standard (10 times the value of the FSPI index) and micro-sized (1/10th the size) contracts and round-the-clock trading.