CME Event Contracts

CME filed a self-certified rule change, effective September 11, 2026, to stop adding new contract expiries for its sports and cultural event-contract swaps (including sports outcomes, the Oscars, and the Grammys) on CME Globex; existing open contracts continue trading and clearing through expiration, but no replacement rounds will be listed. The filing does not state a reason. It follows CEO Terry Duffy's July 22 remarks distancing CME from sportsbook-style products and the August restructuring that shifted sports and novelty contract supply for FanDuel Predicts from CME to Crypto.com, leaving CME's remaining event-contract business concentrated in macro, weather, and financial-benchmark products.

The Hyperliquid Policy Center, represented by former Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, filed an amicus brief in law-cme-v-cftc arguing CME lacks standing because the BTCPERP approval expanded rather than restricted the market and that CFTC-regulated-since-2020 Kalshi is not a new competitor; the brief warned CME's theory would let any incumbent exchange sue over a regulator's approval of a rival's product, calling CME '[o]nce a titan of innovation' now advancing a novel standing theory — the first outside party to weigh in against CME's suit.

Named as one of several co-defendants (alongside lead defendants DraftKings and Polymarket, plus Robinhood and a group of market-making firms) in Hughes v. DraftKings (Charleston County, SC, surfaced September 2, 2026); CME's role is peripheral to the suit's core unlicensed-gambling theory, which targets DraftKings' and Polymarket's own sports-event contracts rather than CME's institutional-oriented product line.

The CFTC moved to dismiss CME's suit over the BTCPERP approval on September 2, 2026, arguing CME lacks standing because the same order lets CME itself list bitcoin perpetual futures as a DCM (law-cme-v-cftc); the agency's own framing — that CME's complaint is about a level playing field it is already free to compete on rather than an unlawful exclusion — narrows CME's likeliest path to relief to a straight statutory-authority argument rather than a competitive-injury one.

CEO Terrence Duffy publicly clashed with CFTC Chair Selig and Kalshi COO Luana Lopes Lara at the CFTC's August 20 Innovation Advisory Committee meeting, arguing self-certified event contracts (e.g., State of the Union and Maduro-outcome contracts) are manipulable; Selig said the products Duffy cited were listed offshore rather than on a CFTC-regulated DCM, but also signaled the agency expects to propose amendments to DCM event-contract listing rules — a rare instance of CME using a public regulatory forum, not just litigation, to press its manipulation argument against the sector.