The 2026 NFL season has been a massive commercial draw so far, as expected. Billions have been wagered at sportsbooks or traded on prediction markets and tens of millions of fans have tuned in for each match.
However this year there has also been an interesting divergence in this commercial side of the game – with TV viewership falling significantly year-on-year, while sports betting and prediction markets hit record levels of money on NFL markets. Now into Week 3, these numbers raise interesting questions about the future of the NFL’s audience engagement strategy in the long term.
Numbers Still Huge, But Divergence is Coming
The opening week of the NFL season – traditionally a peak in viewership – this year saw TV viewership down double digit percentage on the previous year. Average view numbers hit 19.5 million across the games, down 13% on 2025. That made it the least watched season-opener since 2023 when 18.7 million people tuned in.
For some context, the Sunday Night clash between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys was the most viewed broadcast of the week nationally (combined TV, syndication and streaming) with 25.6 million viewers. The Seattle Seahawk’s Wednesday 10 September victory over the New England Patriots was similarly watched by just over 25 million people.
Yet, meanwhile, sports betting is booming – in some markets – and the new competitor prediction markets are also seeing record trading on NFL contracts. In New York, the nation’s largest sports betting market, bettors wagered a record $596 million. That was up 12% year-on-year.
US sports betting is a hugely competitive sector – as per Covers’ breakdown of the major operators available across the state-regulated markets. Such comparative resources provide comprehensive detail on dozens of operators’ offerings, showing just how much information bettors want before deciding where to wager.
Yet, increasingly, it may be that sports betting fans are looking at all the data and turning to prediction markets instead.
Prediction Markets Could Also Reach $55 Billion this NFL Season
The platform Kalshi in particular, has heavily focused on NFL trading markets. It saw seen $2.4 billion traded in a single day on Sunday with NFL contracts seeing significant interest. The Giants-Cowboys game game saw $112 million traded, while the Minnesota Vikings’ victory against the Green Bay Packers closed with $39.6 million traded.
According to projections, Kalshi may be on track for $57 billion in trading volume on this NFL season. While that isn’t the same as revenue or even directly comparable to sports betting handle, it is significantly higher than the estimated total NFL betting handle across the US in 2025 of $30 billion.
These numbers don’t tell the whole story however. For one thing, many sports betting operators are now in on the prediction market game. DraftKings and FanDuel have both hedged their bets and launched their own prediction apps in recent months. Although not on the scale of the two market leaders Kalshi and Polymarket, DraftKings in particular has seen significant success with its prediction offering.
This massive uptake in prediction markets has caused somewhat of a schism among sports betting operators, and legally in the US. Prediction markets maintain they are not gambling, as they are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as financial products. However, lots of money is right now being put down on the results of NFL games on these platforms.
Does that sound like gambling to you? It does to several state regulators, including New Jersey which has recently taken its case against Kalshi to the Supreme Court.
What Could This All Mean for the Future of the NFL and Betting?
Betting is big business. Even if you don’t partake, betting adverts at sports matches and on broadcasts are practically unmissable. This means what happens in the betting sector is important to sports fans.
Yes – TV audiences were down significantly, but the NFL’s opening weeks have remained strong and top the weekly viewership charts. However, with betting and prediction trading both still growing it seems there is an ongoing change in the way people view and engage with the NFL.
Fans, and even the Federal Communications Commission, have increasingly noted that NFL broadcasting is fragmented with 10 different services required to watch all of a single team’s regular season games. That has lead fans to seek out alternatives, which may fragment the broadcast system even more.
Illegal streams of NFL games remain popular, with up to 35% of fans in some surveys saying they regularly use pirate streams to watch games. One study estimated illegal sports streaming costs the global sports market almost a billion dollars annually, although there is little info on the NFL specifically.
For another thing, plenty of bettors now watch games directly through their sportsbook app of choice. Since 2023 several of the nation’s most popular sportsbooks let viewers watch NFL games they have bet on directly in the sportsbook’s mobile app. The NFL, with it’s high-visibility betting brand partnerships, has given more exposure to this way of watching its games – that isn’t necessarily tracked by mainstream viewing data.
