The NFL dropped its exclusive sportsbook deal for three rival partners — while Polymarket signed MLB for up to $300 million

Two sponsorship stories are colliding in professional sports in 2026. The first is the maturing, increasingly competitive market for traditional sportsbook league deals — the kind of arrangement that made DraftKings and FanDuel presenting partners of NBA and NFL broadcasts. The second is the sudden arrival of federally regulated prediction market operators — Kalshi and Polymarket — signing their own league deals, on their own terms, fast enough to unsettle the sponsorship categories sportsbooks had spent a decade negotiating. Both stories connect directly to the advertising pullback covered in our sports betting advertising analysis: leagues and operators alike are renegotiating what a "betting" sponsorship even means.

The NFL replaced one exclusive sportsbook deal with three non-exclusive ones

From 2021 through the 2025 season, the NFL ran a tri-exclusive sportsbook arrangement with DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars Entertainment as its only three authorized gambling operators. That structure ended when the contracts expired after the 2025 season. For 2026, the league re-signed DraftKings and FanDuel but moved to a non-exclusive model, and added Fanatics Betting and Gaming as a third partner — notably, with an exclusive online casino marketing component the other two operators don't get. Caesars, meanwhile, "reportedly opted not to pursue a new partnership with the league" at all. None of the three 2026 contracts' financial terms have been publicly disclosed, but the shift from three-exclusive to three-non-exclusive with a new entrant is itself a signal: the league gained a new, differentiated revenue stream (the online-casino carve-out) rather than simply renewing what it had.

The NBA's betting partners get broadcast integration — its jersey patches don't

The NBA named FanDuel and DraftKings co-official sports betting partners as far back as November 2021, with neither company's arrangement described as exclusive. FanDuel became the presenting partner of NBA TV's weekly NBABet show and gained rights to display real-time odds on NBA.com; DraftKings became the presenting partner of NBABet Stream telecasts on League Pass and launched branded in-broadcast games. Neither company's deal terms were disclosed publicly.

What's more striking is what's absent from the league's other major sponsorship program. The NBA's jersey patch initiative — which launched with an initial ~$100 million valuation and had grown to a projected $225 million across the league by the 2021-22 season, with top-tier deals like the Lakers' five-year, $100 million agreement with Bibigo — has never included a sportsbook or gambling operator among its roughly 44 corporate patch partners, which instead skew toward fintech, food, insurance, and technology brands. Betting operators buy broadcast integration and league-wide marks; they don't buy the patch.

Prediction markets signed five major leagues in about six months

The fastest-moving story in sports sponsorship in 2026 isn't a sportsbook deal at all. Kalshi and Polymarket — CFTC-regulated prediction market operators, not licensed sportsbooks — signed a wave of league agreements between October 2025 and April 2026:

MLB's decision to treat "prediction market" as a sponsorship category separate from "sports betting" is the detail with the most downstream consequence. It means Polymarket's deal doesn't count against — or require renegotiating — MLB's existing sportsbook sponsors like FanDuel. According to reporting on the shift, sportsbooks are now "proactively engaging with their partners to broaden their rights and keep emerging platforms at bay," pursuing right-of-first-refusal clauses or asking leagues to fold prediction markets into their existing exclusive categories — concessions that reporting suggests will cost sportsbooks a premium to secure at their next renewal.

The Premier League is walking away from gambling shirt sponsors entirely

While US leagues are adding betting-adjacent sponsorship categories, English football is removing one. Premier League clubs voluntarily agreed — following consultation with the UK government — to withdraw gambling sponsors from the front of their shirts starting with the 2026/27 season. As of the 2025/26 season, 11 of the league's 20 clubs still carried a gambling brand as their front-of-shirt sponsor, and among the 14 clubs outside the "Big Six," gambling brands accounted for 78.6% of front-of-shirt deal volume — a reflection of how structurally dependent mid-tier clubs had become on betting sponsorship money, with total front-of-shirt gambling spend estimated around £95 million annually league-wide.

Replacing that revenue is proving expensive. Industry estimates cited around the ban suggest clubs outside the top six are seeing sponsorship offers drop by roughly 50% as they swap gambling sponsors for non-gambling ones — deals that ran £8–12 million annually under a gambling sponsor reportedly falling to £4–5 million with a replacement brand. One senior industry estimate puts the Premier League's collective revenue shortfall from the change at up to £80 million ($109 million) in its first season. One level down, English Football League clubs face a similar dynamic — 25% of Championship clubs carry gambling as their primary shirt sponsor, and Sky Bet's EFL title sponsorship alone distributes roughly £40 million a year across all 72 EFL clubs, with individual clubs depending on gambling money for 28–38% of total commercial revenue.

What leagues gain, in aggregate, from legal sports betting

Putting a single dollar figure on "sponsorship value" across every league is difficult because most contracts are private, but the American Gaming Association's own modeling gives a sense of scale: it estimates $596 million in direct gaming-related TV advertising revenue and a further $89 million in data and video rights revenue flowing to leagues and broadcasters from legal sports betting. Combined with wider media-consumption effects, the AGA's total per-league revenue estimates attributable to legal sports betting run to roughly $2.3 billion for the NFL, $1.1 billion for MLB, $585 million for the NBA, and $216 million for the NHL — figures that include increased viewership and engagement value alongside direct sponsorship and advertising, not sponsorship alone.

Methodology

Deal structures, dates, and reported values in this piece are compiled from publicly available sports-business and trade press reporting current to their publication dates in 2025 and 2026, cited individually below. Several figures — including Polymarket's MLB deal value and the Premier League's projected shortfall — are reported ranges or industry estimates rather than confirmed contract figures, since professional sports sponsorship agreements are rarely disclosed in full by the parties involved; they are presented here as reported, not independently verified. Currency conversions from British pounds to US dollars use the rate implied by the cited source at time of publication and have not been re-converted to a current exchange rate. The American Gaming Association's per-league revenue estimates combine direct sponsorship/advertising revenue with broader media-consumption effects and should not be read as sponsorship value alone.

References

1. SBC Americas. (2026, August). Which Online Sportsbooks Are Official NFL Partners in 2026? https://sbcamericas.com/2026/08/27/nfl-sportsbook-partners-2026/
2. Boardroom. (2021). The NBA's Jersey Patch Program is Worth Nearly a Quarter Billion Dollars. https://boardroom.tv/nba-jersey-patch-program/
3. Boardroom. (2021, November). NBA Names FanDuel, DraftKings Co-official Sports Betting Partners. https://boardroom.tv/nba-fanduel-draftkings-sports-betting-deal/
4. Bettors Insider. (2026, April). The Sponsorship War Between Prediction Markets and Sportsbooks Is Reshaping Every League Deal in Professional Sports. https://bettorsinsider.com/sports-betting/2026/04/10/the-sponsorship-war-between-prediction-markets-and-sportsbooks-is-reshaping-every-league-deal-in-professional-sports/
5. Gambling Insider. (2026). Premier League Gambling Ban Leaves Clubs Facing £80m Sponsorship Shortfall. https://www.gamblinginsider.com/news/152495/premier-league-gambling-ban-shirt-sponsors-80m-loss
6. The Esk (Paul Quinn, The Analysis Series). (2026, February). Audit of Gambling's Commercial Dominance in English Professional Football. https://theesk.org/2026/02/15/the-analysis-series-audit-of-gambling-commercial-dominance-in-english-professional-football/
7. American Gaming Association. How Much Do Leagues Stand to Gain from Legal Sports Betting? https://www.americangaming.org/resources/how-much-do-leagues-stand-to-gain-from-legal-sports-betting/