The National Football League (NFL) entered April 2026 without a single official sports betting partner for the first time since 2021, as its trio of existing deals with FanDuel, DraftKings, and Caesars each expired at midnight on March 31 without renewal. The lapse coincides with a period of intense legal scrutiny over in-game betting practices.
Billion-Dollar Deals Expire
In April 2021, the NFL for the first time anointed official sports betting partners, signing three five-year agreements collectively worth nearly $1 billion. Now, none of the three partners renewed before the deadline, according to an SBJ report confirmed by NBC Sports' Pro Football Talk. Negotiations between the NFL and its two largest partners, FanDuel and DraftKings, stalled over a price increase for official streaming data distributed through Genius Sports, the league's exclusive real-time data provider. Caesars was not expected to renew regardless of the data pricing dispute.
Genius Sports, which powers over 98% of legalized U.S. sports betting on NFL games according to the league's own website, extended its exclusive data deal through the 2030 season in June 2025. The NFL was Genius Sports' largest shareholder from 2021 to 2025, receiving 22.5 million shares across the original deal and the subsequent extension. To date, it remains the company's second-largest shareholder.
Data Pricing Dispute Stalls Negotiations
The league told SBJ it remains open to “various league partnership structures,” a signal that could include an exclusive arrangement with a single operator rather than the three-partner model. However, with FanDuel and DraftKings controlling roughly two-thirds of the U.S. sportsbook market, alternatives capable of replacing their spending are limited.
The absence of a replacement deal comes against a backdrop of growing legal challenges. On March 24, the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) at Northeastern University filed a product liability lawsuit in Philadelphia naming the NFL itself as a defendant alongside DraftKings, FanDuel, and Genius Sports. The complaint notably does not name Caesars as a defendant.
Microbetting Addiction Lawsuit
The complaint alleges the companies developed and distributed online sports betting platforms engineered to be addictive, specifically targeting microbetting — rapid in-game wagers on individual plays that settle within seconds. These bets include whether the next play will be a pass or a run, whether a third-down conversion attempt will succeed, or the outcome of the next drive. The product is powered by the same Genius Sports data pipeline at the center of the partnership pricing dispute.
The suit was brought on behalf of two Pennsylvania residents who claim they developed severe gambling addictions, drawing explicit parallels to tobacco industry litigation. It alleges DraftKings and FanDuel used AI-driven push notifications and personal VIP hosts to escalate betting behavior, even after one plaintiff indicated he wanted to stop. “Following in the footsteps of the tobacco industry, the online sports gambling industry has developed a highly addictive, difficult-to-resist product that bombards consumers with dozens of betting opportunities every minute of the day,” PHAI Litigation Director Andrew Rainer said in a statement.
According to the Boston Globe, DraftKings, FanDuel and the NFL did not respond to requests for comment. A Genius Sports spokesman also declined to address the litigation. U.S. sports betting generated a record $16.96 billion in revenue in 2025 on $166.94 billion in total wagers, according to the American Gaming Association. The NFL remains the single most-wagered sport in the country.