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Robert Klemko
multiple authors
In 2016, the San Diego Chargers’ front office and coaching staff were excited about Ohio State edge rusher Joey Bosa, but the rest of the league disagreed. Bosa remained out of the top-three conversation for months, and most major media mock drafts sent other players going to San Diego at No. 3.
Former NFL general manager Tom Telesco, who led the Chargers front office from 2013 to 23, figures between 20 and 30 people would know who the Chargers would select 24 hours before draft day, based on meetings with ownership, scouting meetings where prospects are discussed in detail and the team’s draft board is built, and internal whispers.
At that time, any insider with that information would need to place bets illegally or with a foreign sports betting organization. A decade later, someone armed with similar fixed bets would simply have to visit a prediction market website, sign up for an account and place bets on the form, confident in their anonymity.
“It scares me,” Telesco said. “It’s something I never would have considered a possibility.”
Nowadays, Telesco said, there’s not much a GM can do but tighten the circle of people with insider information inside an organization and hope there’s no scandal.
“When I was a scout, we treated this information like a state secret,” Telesco said. “The only thing you can really do is scare people and tell them that heads will spin. At the end of the day, if you don’t trust your employees, you’ve got the wrong employees.”
The NFL has identified prediction markets as being particularly susceptible to insider abuse in the wake of several high-profile trades that accurately predicted the onset of U.S. military action in Iran and Venezuela, potentially leading to congressional inquiries into insider trading emanating from the War Department or the White House. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, works as a consultant with both companies, and he is an investor in Polymarket.
Prediction markets like Kalshi and PolyMarket are federally regulated (unlike traditional sports betting sites, which are regulated by states), and under the second Trump administration, they have expanded options for trading on sports offerings, including who is selected where in the NFL Draft. Kalashi users have bought bets totaling nearly $2 million on the identification of the No. 2 pick.
Last month, the NFL sent letters to several prediction markets asking them to stop trading options on outcomes that can be determined in advance or easily manipulated.
The NFL stated that it wanted to protect game participants from “unfair and unwanted accusations” involving gambling and prediction markets and objected to four types of offerings: those that could be easily manipulated by an individual (such as missed field goals), those that are known in advance (such as draft selections, player signings and coach firings), anything related to officiating, and “inherently objectionable” topics (such as player injuries and fan safety).
The sites have declined to make the change, and users can trade on a variety of props, including who will be the 13th pick in the draft this week, or the identity of the third wide receiver off the board. There are more than 100 draft-related offers available for investment on Kalshi.
Kalshi declined to comment for this story. Polymarket did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
And while sportsbooks like DraftKings, ESPN’s official sportsbook and odds provider, keep strict monitors of betting patterns and historically crack down on questionable insider-informed betting by banning accounts and alerting law enforcement when applicable, prediction markets have not raised those concerns over controversial winning trades. Instead, the odds increase with the action, and big bets affect the market in real time.
Both Polymarket and Kalshi have partnered with integrity monitors like IC360 (formerly US Integrity), and Kalshi says it screens and bans professional athletes, coaches, trainers, and others from trading any sports-related.
The NFL took a hard stance against any ties to gambling until the Supreme Court eliminated the barriers to legalizing sports gambling in a 2018 decision. Since legalization and subsequent partnerships with sportsbooks, the NFL has had its share of players disciplined for gambling-related incidents – as has happened in Major League Baseball, the NBA, and NCAA basketball.
The NFL says it educates teams every year about the dangers and penalties associated with sports gambling.
“Prior to each draft, the league reiterates to all NFL personnel – including owners, presidents, general managers, head coaches, player personnel directors and IT directors – the importance of maintaining the integrity of the draft selection process through adherence to the NFL Gambling Policy and draft-related safeguards,” a league spokesperson said in a statement.
The league suspended Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley for the entire 2022 season after it was found that he had bet on NFL games while on the non-football illness list.
Ridley was one of several players suspended for the entire season in 2022 and 2023. Another player, Titans offensive lineman Nicolas Petit-Frere, was among a handful of players who were suspended for a reduced number of games only for betting on non-NFL games while they were inside NFL facilities (sports betting apps, in cooperation with the NFL, share flagged geolocation data when bets are placed inside team facilities).
The Titans’ general manager at the time, Ryan Carthon, told ESPN that it was the first and only time he had dealt with a gambling issue as an NFL employee. He did not consider that an employee could use inside information to profit from the draft.
“I’ve been a scout and I made $35,000 a year, so I know how tempting it can be to earn a quick five grand,” Carthon said. “In the era we’re in, you have to put your foot down and say this is a fireable offense. It’s not ‘Hey buddy, I know you made a mistake.'” No, if you get caught, you’re fired, and your entire career is more likely to be over. It’s definitely a conversation to have.
Former Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert said: “As a purist it’s worrisome. On the day of the draft itself, the draft room was open. We weren’t very secretive. Anybody could go in and out, because there was a certain degree of trust. Naively, you want to believe everybody is in it for the right reasons.”
If recent scandals in the NBA are any indication, leaks can come from anywhere, and for any reason. In 2024, Toronto Raptors guard Jonte Porter was implicated in a gambling scheme in which he gave inside information to a bookmaker to whom he owed a large sum of money. Porter received a lifetime ban from the NBA. He pleaded guilty in federal court and is awaiting sentencing.
Martin Mayhew, a former NFL player, Georgetown-educated lawyer and former general manager of the Lions and Commanders, said the draft is particularly vulnerable to insider trading at the top of the first round, when a team’s staff knows it values a prospect more than other teams.
That was the case in 2013, when the Lions had the fifth overall pick and were in the market to land a pick. The coaching staff spent a week with BYU’s Ezekiel Ansah at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama.
“His college career probably wasn’t destined to take it to such heights,” Mayhew said. “But our coaching staff was very confident — and rightfully so — that they would get rid of him relatively quickly, depending on how quickly he improved that week. There wasn’t a very small group of people in the building that knew that.”
Mayhew said he believes disaster is likely. That said, someone connected to a team — through pressure or ambition, from the owners’ suite to the locker room — will likely step up. The question is whether they get caught.
Mayhew said, “When they adopted gambling the leagues really found a way to maximize profits.” “The value of the franchise has skyrocketed. But as people become more comfortable with it, I wouldn’t be surprised when someone crosses the line. In a way, the NFL is playing with fire.”
ESPN reporter Robert Klemko can be reached at robert.klemko@espn.com Or on Signal (@klemko.84).
ESPN’s David Purdum and John Mastroberardino contributed to this report.
