The hottest product in sports betting right now is one you can’t actually place. No sportsbook offers it, no regulator has approved it, and the founders racing to build it can’t agree on whether it lands next year or never. It’s called a sports perpetual future — a “perp” — and it borrows its DNA from the riskiest corner of crypto trading. Here’s what a sports perpetual future would really be, why every prediction market wants one, and what’s standing in the way.
KEY FACTS AT A GLANCE
- What it is: A never-expiring, leveraged bet kept in line by a funding rate instead of a final result
- Availability: None — no sports perp has launched or been approved anywhere in the US
- Where it comes from: Crypto “perps,” now offered on Kalshi and Polymarket for digital assets
- The catch: Leverage can multiply losses and force liquidation, with fewer protections than a sportsbook
- The fight: CME is suing the CFTC, arguing perps are “swaps,” not “futures”
What is a perpetual future, exactly?
Start with a normal futures contract. Two sides agree on a price for something — oil, gold, Bitcoin — to be settled on a set date. When that date arrives, the contract expires and everyone squares up. A perpetual future strips the expiry out entirely. There is no settlement date, nothing to roll over, and no countdown forcing you to act. You can hold the position for as long as you like, provided you keep enough collateral behind it.
Without an expiry to pull the contract back toward reality, perps use a mechanism called the funding rate to stay tethered to the real “spot” price. Every few hours, one side pays the other a small fee: when the perp trades above the underlying price, the buyers (longs) pay the sellers (shorts); when it trades below, shorts pay longs. That steady drip of payments nudges the price back into line, doing the job that expiration does for a traditional future.
The other defining feature is leverage. Perps are margin products, so a trader can control a position far larger than the cash they put down. Offshore venues have offered up to 100x, meaning $100 could control $10,000 of exposure. US-regulated platforms are far more conservative — Kalshi caps its Bitcoin perp near 5.7x, and Polymarket has offered up to 10x. Leverage cuts both ways: a small move in your favor is magnified, but so is a move against you, and if losses eat through your collateral the position is automatically liquidated.
| Feature | A normal sports bet | A sports perpetual future |
|---|---|---|
| Ends when? | At the final whistle — the game settles it | Never — you hold until you choose to exit |
| What you bet on | A fixed outcome (win, spread, total) | A value that keeps moving (e.g. live odds or a stat line) |
| Leverage | None — you risk your stake | Built in — you can control more than you deposit |
| How it stays fair | The sportsbook’s vig | A periodic funding rate between longs and shorts |
| Worst case | You lose your stake | Liquidation wipes your collateral before you can react |
If the funding rate sounds like a trader’s version of the house’s cut, that’s a useful way to think about it — you can compare it to a sportsbook’s margin with our vig calculator.
So what would a “sports perpetual future” be?
Here’s the tension at the heart of the idea. A perp is engineered never to end. A sports bet almost always hooks to an event with a clear finish — a game, a match, a tournament. Bolt those two things together and the seams show immediately.
To make it work, a sports perp couldn’t track a single game’s result. It would have to follow something that keeps moving and never has to “settle” — a team’s live championship odds across a season, a star player’s running stat line, or a rolling win-probability number. You’d take a long or short position on that value, hold it as long as you wanted, apply leverage, and cash out whenever you chose. Instead of waiting for a result to pay out, you’d ride the price up and down and pay or collect the funding rate along the way.
That’s the appeal and the problem in one breath. It turns a season into a market you can trade around the clock — but it also strips away the one thing that makes a sports bet legible to most people: the final whistle that tells you whether you won.
Why every prediction market is racing to build them
The short answer is money. Perpetual futures are the single biggest product in crypto, doing roughly $90 trillion in annual volume globally, according to CNBC. Until 2026 that entire market was off-limits to US traders. The moment it cracked open, demand was ferocious.
Kalshi’s launch made the case in numbers. After becoming the first company to offer CFTC-regulated perps in America, its contracts did more than $100 million in their first 24 hours, crossed $1 billion inside a week, and hit $5.5 billion in two weeks — the fastest-growing product in the company’s history, with a waitlist that had topped a million people. Polymarket, which beat Kalshi to market for US users in April, has been pushing its own leveraged contracts.
That demand is exactly why sports is the obvious next frontier. Sports are the most popular category on prediction markets, so an operator that could package them as perps would be tapping its biggest audience with its most lucrative product. A crowded field is already positioning: Kalshi and Polymarket have live crypto perps, Polymarket is seeking a margin-trading license, sports-first exchanges ProphetX and Novig are working toward leveraged products, and Crypto.com's OG venture has floated its own margin-trading plans. It's the same land grab driving the broader shift in which prediction markets are eating into traditional sportsbooks.
How we got here: the 2026 perps rollout
Sports perps are a hypothetical, but the machinery that would make them possible was built in a frantic eight-week stretch in the spring of 2026 — starting with Polymarket, cemented by a CFTC green light for Kalshi, and immediately challenged in court.
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APR 21, 2026Polymarket launches perpsFirst out of the gate for US users, on Bitcoin, Nvidia and gold — with leverage up to 10x.
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MAY 29, 2026CFTC approves Kalshi's bitcoin perpThe regulator clears the first CFTC-regulated perpetual future in America and issues a policy statement; Kalshi launches with 13 crypto contracts.
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FIRST WEEK$1 billion in volumeKalshi's perps cross $1 billion in notional trading volume within seven days of launch.
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TWO WEEKS$5.5 billion in volumeThe fastest-growing product in Kalshi's history hits $5.5 billion, with open interest peaking near $810 million.
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JUN 18, 2026CME sues the CFTCThe exchange giant asks a federal court to undo the approval, arguing perps are "swaps," not futures. The CFTC calls the suit "frivolous."
The hurdles: regulation and real risk
Even with the plumbing in place, a sports perp faces two very different walls. The first is legal. So far the CFTC has only approved perps on crypto, grounding its decision in the depth and round-the-clock trading of the Bitcoin spot market. It reviews anything else case by case, and no company has even submitted a sports perp — insiders say the agency would be highly skeptical. The whole category is also under a cloud: CME's lawsuit argues that perps aren't futures at all but "swaps," reviving the same swaps-versus-futures classification fight already dogging Kalshi's sports contracts. If CME wins, it could take the entire US perps market down with it, sports included. It layers on top of the ongoing battle over how sports prediction markets should be regulated.
The second wall is risk. Prediction markets sit under the CFTC as financial products, not under state gambling regulators — which means the guardrails bettors take for granted at a sportsbook, like mandatory self-exclusion and deposit limits, aren't required. Users as young as 18 can trade in many cases, and the National Council on Problem Gambling argues event-contract trading is functionally gambling. Add leverage to that mix and the stakes climb sharply.
WHY LEVERAGE MAKES PERPS DANGEROUS
With 5x leverage, $100 controls a $500 position. That magnifies a win — but a move of just 20% against you erases your entire stake and the position is liquidated automatically, often before you have a chance to react. Higher leverage means an even smaller move wipes you out. Unlike a losing sports bet, where you simply forfeit your wager, a leveraged perp can drain your collateral fast.
So when will sports perps actually arrive?
Nobody agrees. Ask the people building this world and you get a spread that runs from "within a year" to "probably never." Executives at sports-focused exchange UFO Holdings have suggested a launch could come within twelve months; others see the structural mismatch as a lasting obstacle.
"Probably not near, but definitely interesting."
— Jake Benzaquen, ProphetX co-founder, on sports perps (via Sportico)
Even the market leader is playing it down. Novig's chief executive has described sports as "not the most natural application" for perps, while allowing that products which "sort of mimic" them could emerge. And a Kalshi spokesperson was blunter still, telling Sportico that sports perps are "not coming anytime soon, if at all." For now, the sports perpetual future is exactly what it sounds like: a product with enormous pull and no address — hyped, half-built, and stuck behind a wall of regulation and risk.
FAQs
It is a proposed betting product that borrows from crypto trading: a never-expiring, leveraged position on a sports-related value, such as a team's live championship odds or a player's running stat line. Instead of settling when a game ends, it is kept in line by a periodic funding rate, and you hold it until you decide to exit.
No. As of mid-2026, no sports perpetual future has been launched or approved anywhere in the US. No company has even submitted one to the CFTC, and industry insiders say the regulator would be highly skeptical of the idea.
A normal sports bet settles at the final whistle and you simply risk your stake. A sports perp would never expire, would let you apply leverage to control more than you deposit, and would use a funding rate rather than a fixed result. The trade-off is that a leveraged position can be liquidated, wiping your collateral before the season is even over.
The funding rate is a small fee paid periodically between traders on opposite sides of a perpetual future. When the contract trades above the real spot price, longs pay shorts; when it trades below, shorts pay longs. This steady exchange keeps the perp's price tethered to the underlying value, doing the job that an expiration date does for a traditional futures contract.
Crypto perpetual futures are. In 2026 the CFTC approved the first regulated perps, and both Kalshi and Polymarket now offer them on digital assets. Sports perps are a different matter: none has been approved, and the entire category is being challenged in court by CME, which argues perps are swaps rather than futures.
Several prediction-market and betting firms are positioning for it. Kalshi and Polymarket already run crypto perps, Polymarket is seeking a margin-trading license, and sports-focused exchanges ProphetX and Novig are working toward leveraged products. Crypto.com's OG venture has also floated margin-trading plans. None has announced an actual sports perp yet.
In June 2026, CME Group sued the CFTC to undo its approval of Kalshi's bitcoin perpetual future. CME argues that perps cannot be futures because they lack a fixed expiration date, and should instead be classified as swaps under existing law. The CFTC called the suit frivolous, but if CME succeeds it could unwind the entire US perps market — taking any future sports perps with it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- A sports perp is a never-expiring, leveraged bet — kept in line by a funding rate instead of a final result
- None exist yet — no sports perp has launched or been approved, and none has even been submitted to the CFTC
- The demand is real — Kalshi's crypto perps hit $5.5 billion in two weeks, and sports are prediction markets' biggest category
- Two walls stand in the way — regulatory skepticism plus the CME lawsuit, and the outsized risk that leverage brings to retail bettors
- Timelines range from a year to never — even the companies building this world can't agree on when, or whether, it arrives
Sources
- Statement on Crypto Asset Perpetual Contracts — U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- Sports Betting With Borrowed Funds, Infinite Timelines — Sportico
- What Are 'Perps' and Why Are Prediction Markets Racing to Offer Them? — Gaming America
- Explainer: Perpetual Futures Contracts — Futures Industry Association
- Kalshi Perps Cross $1 Billion in Volume Within a Week — CNBC
- Kalshi Aims to Expand Perpetual Futures After $5.5 Billion Debut — Bloomberg
- CME Sues CFTC Over Letting Kalshi, Coinbase Offer Perpetual Futures — Reuters / U.S. News
- Consumer Protections for Prediction Market Event Contracts — National Council on Problem Gambling
