A Chicago-based startup called FutureSports has struck a deal with the National Hockey League to turn live game statistics into tradable financial indexes, and CME Group plans to roll out futures contracts built on that data as soon as September 28. The arrangement would let traders, sponsors and broadcasters take financial positions on how NHL teams perform over the course of a season, not just who wins a single game.
FutureSports announced the landmark deal with the NHL to use official game statistics to establish the financial indexes, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. CME Group, which operates the world's largest futures exchange, plans to list the sports futures on September 28, 2026, pending regulatory review, timed just ahead of the NHL season opener on September 29. Each of the 32 NHL team indexes will open at a baseline of 7,500 points and fluctuate based on real-time statistical data throughout the season, per the same account.
FutureSports co-founders Rhett Dinsdale and Leigh Taylforth relocated the business to Chicago in 2023, three years after starting the company in 2022. Dinsdale, according to the Sun-Times report, said sports statistical performance has never before been accessible to people and the financial community in this way. The pair filed a U.S. patent application in October 2022 for a sports-trading system designed to calculate financial indexes from live athletic statistics and route them to an order-matching exchange module, a filing that was later published in December 2024, according to MarketsWiki.
How the Indexes Actually Work
Each CME FutureSports Performance Index continuously adjusts during regular and postseason games through a rules-based formula that adds points for positive plays and deducts points for negative ones, MarketsWiki reports. FutureSports plans to share every statistic category and its correlation on the index before trading starts, the Sun-Times notes. The NHL will provide the underlying statistics that feed the indexes but will not determine their calculation or governance, and the league has said it will establish layered monitoring and other protections for games and related financial products.
That separation matters for regulatory purposes. FutureSports structured its index administration to align with the International Organization of Securities Commissions Principles for Financial Benchmarks, keeping sports leagues strictly as data suppliers with no input on index calculation or governance, according to Markets Media. Unlike binary event contracts on prediction platforms such as Kalshi or Polymarket, which settle on yes-or-no game outcomes, CME's sports futures reference continuous benchmark indexes that settle monthly or quarterly, functioning more like traditional equity index futures, according to Finance Magnates. Prediction market contracts typically trade between $0.01 and $1.00, per the Sun-Times, while futures contracts allow investors to buy or sell an asset at an agreed price by a specific date and can be used to hedge risk.
Who Might Actually Trade These
CME sports futures will trade around the clock and come in two sizes: standard contracts valued at 10 times the underlying NHL index, and micro contracts valued at one-tenth of it, the Sun-Times reports. Commercial entities eyeing the product as a hedging tool include team sponsors, regional sports broadcasters, sports apparel manufacturers, stadium owners, third-party arena operators, and food and beverage vendors, according to TradingView. Those businesses have real money riding on team performance: NHL teams generated a record $1.53 billion in sponsorship revenue during the 2024-25 season and drew more than 23 million fans into arenas during the 2025-26 season, the highest attendance in the league's 108-year history, according to a PR Newswire release cited by the Sun-Times.
Retail traders are also part of the pitch. Institutional investors comprise 94% of CME's trading volume, but the exchange had more than 650,000 retail participants last year and works with more than 130 retail broker partners, per the Sun-Times report. Retail futures contracts are typically sized at one-tenth to one-one-hundredth of standard futures contracts, and institutional futures contracts typically have values of $100,000 to more than $250,000. Margin requirements for both retail and institutional sports futures typically range from 3% to 10% of total contract value, though futures contracts can magnify losses quickly.
Other retail trading data points to a growing appetite among younger investors. Cboe retail-traded options reached 3.1 million average daily volume in the second quarter, up 364% from 668,000 a year earlier, the Sun-Times reports. NinjaTrader customers under 35 account for more than 36% of the platform's customers, and its customers aged 18 to 24 have doubled in the last few years, while MEMX estimates retail investors account for 30% to 37% of daily trading volume overall.
A Regulatory Hurdle From 2020 Looms
FutureSports has attracted financial backers including Marquee Ventures, Elysian Park Ventures, Robinhood and CME, according to the Sun-Times, and the startup emerged from stealth mode in July with an expanded investor list that also includes Wedbush Securities and DRW Special Investments, per PR Newswire. Its advisory bench includes former Intercontinental Exchange Chief Operating Officer Mark Wassersug alongside former senior executives from S&P Dow Jones Indices, FTSE Russell, Sportradar and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Finance Magnates reports.
Still, the FutureSports and CME Group proposal must clear review by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which can deny, approve or take no action on it. The agency's history here is not encouraging for the startups: the CFTC voiced concerns in 2020 that Eris Exchange's proposed sports trades amounted to sports gambling, and Eris ultimately withdrew that proposal the same year. Cboe later acquired Eris Exchange in 2022. Futures exchange members must be registered with both the National Futures Association and the CFTC, and retail investors typically access futures markets through a futures commission merchant or brokerage firm.
The NHL deal covers financial indexes for all 32 league teams, plus indexes tied to select NHL athletes, but FutureSports will not create an index for the Bears or other NFL teams this season, according to the Sun-Times. The company says it is targeting partnerships with other sports leagues as it looks to expand beyond hockey. NHL players, coaches and staff are prohibited from buying or selling the sports futures tied to their own league.
The launch lands amid a broader Chicago-area reckoning over sports-linked financial products. Cboe's earlier push into binary event contracts and a Chicago City Hall effort to limit municipal staff from trading on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have both drawn scrutiny this year, alongside Baltimore's lawsuit against those same prediction markets over allegations they operate as illegal sportsbooks. FutureSports and CME are betting that structuring their product around continuous performance indexes, rather than win-or-lose bets, will keep it on the futures side of that regulatory line.
