If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Man, I love sports betting, but there are just not enough places to make wagers,” then you’re in for a treat. And while probably just about no one has said that in the last few years with the proliferation of sports betting platforms (think DraftKings, Bet365, FanDuel, BetMGM, Fanatics, etc.), if we needed one more place, it looks like we’re close to getting it. And this one is going to be in the form of a financial product. Yes, that’s right, a company called FutureSports is partnering with CME Group and the National Hockey League (NHL) to create “performance indexes,” which will be tied to futures contracts and eventually wrapped into exchange-traded funds (ETFs) so you can buy them in your brokerage account. Just what you were looking for, right? But let’s comb through the details to see what is going on.
Who’s In the Game?
Before we get into the mechanics, it’s worth understanding who’s doing what here, because this is a four-party arrangement and each player has a very specific job.
The company driving the bus is FutureSports, which serves as the index administrator. Think of them as the scorekeeper. They created the concept and will calculate and maintain the FutureSports Performance Indexes (the FSPI, because everything in finance eventually becomes an acronym). They are responsible for making sure the numbers are accurate, auditable, and not just made up on a Tuesday.
Next up is CME Group, the exchange that provides the plumbing. They offer the actual “FutureSports Performance” futures contracts that the ETFs hold. This is the crucial bridge, the thing that turns a hockey statistic into something you can legally trade in a financial account.
Then there is the NHL itself, which is really just the raw material supplier. The league’s official game data (goals, penalties, wins, losses) is the fuel that makes the entire machine run. Without the hockey, there are no numbers, and therefore no product. But importantly, the NHL is also the arbiter of the official statistics, so every call, goal, and penalty matters.
And finally, there is Volatility Shares Trust, a Florida-based investment adviser that already specializes in the leveraged and volatility-linked products that make compliance officers reach for the Tums. And just this week, they filed prospectuses with the SEC for all 32 NHL franchises, from the Anaheim Ducks to the Winnipeg Jets. They are the ones building the actual ETF wrapper you would eventually buy.
So What Are You Actually Buying?
This is the part that trips people up, so let’s be clear. Someday, when you buy one of these ETFs, you are not buying a piece of a specific franchise. There is no equity, no ownership stake, no seat at the board table, and certainly no share of the concession revenue. You cannot show up at a shareholder meeting and demand they finally win something important (here’s looking at you Columbus Blue Jackets).
What you would be buying is exposure to a number. Each team gets its own index, designed to convert a full season of on-ice performance into a single, continuously moving value. The ETF holds futures contracts tied to that index, and you make money if the price of those futures rises, which generally happens when the team is playing well, by the numbers. It’s less like owning a business and more like owning a very elaborate, single-team long-term wager.
The key distinction the promoters keep hammering is the difference between this and a traditional sports bet. A normal wager is binary. You put $100 on Saturday’s game, and by the final whistle you either have a profit or you have nothing. These indexes, by contrast, are continuous. They drift up and down every day of the season, so you can take a position on a promising dark horse in October and sell it in March, capturing the whole arc of the story rather than betting on a single scene.
The 7,500 Starting Line
Every one of these indexes begins each season at exactly 7,500. It doesn’t matter if the team is a Cup favorite or a projected basement dweller; they all start at the same number. FutureSports treats 7,500 as a kind of universal sea level, a neutral baseline that lets you measure movement without arguing about where each team “should” begin.
From there, the index is live. It moves in real time as the puck drops, grinds through the 82-game regular season, and keeps moving through the postseason. Once the Stanley Cup is handed out, the whole thing resets back to 7,500 (specifically, 32 days after the final game), wiping the slate clean for the following year. So a team’s index isn’t a running measure of franchise value over time; it’s a fresh season-long story that starts over every fall.
And this is worth noting too: there’s no floor. The methodology makes it clear that an index can go negative if a team piles up enough bad outcomes to burn through both its positive contributions and the 7,500 base. There’s no special treatment, no safety net, no interim adjustment. If your team is historically bad, the number keeps sinking below zero, which should probably give any prospective buyer a moment’s pause.
How the Needle Actually Moves
This is where it gets both interesting and, frankly, a little complicated. But to FutureSports’ credit, the whole scoring system is laid out in a published methodology guide. The index value is driven by 55 distinct statistical measures, including basic wins, losses, and overtime losses. Good things push the number up, and bad things pull it down. Intuitive enough.
So when your favorite player on the Blue Jackets, or Red Wings, or Bruins scores a goal, the index ticks higher. When the team records a win or a goalie posts a shutout, it climbs. When your enforcer takes a penalty, the number drops. A loss, or a sloppy turnover, subtracts value. There are also neutral or secondary events (blocked shots, defensive takeaways) that nudge the number only marginally.
In addition to the single-game stats that impact points, there are “milestone” rewards as well to keep track of. Score the most goals of any team over the last month? Bonus points. Record the most takeaways? Bonus points. On the flip side? You guessed it, you lose points. And don’t forget about the season-long bonuses for most of x, y, or z. And last but not least, don’t sleep on the mega-bonus for winning the Stanley Cup (worth 15% of the original 7,500 point starting index value).
The Clock and the Fine Print
For something marketed as “continuous” and “live,” there is a surprising amount of structure around when the numbers actually count. During a game, you’ll see indicative values updating in real time, but those are explicitly labeled best-efforts only and are not used for settlement. They’re the live monitor, but not the official record until the NHL finalizes the statistics.
The number that actually matters is the Official End-of-Day value, published at 9:00 AM Central Time the following day (what the industry calls T+1) based on final, verified league data. There’s a 9:00 AM cutoff, so a Monday night game that ends at 1:00 AM Tuesday still counts toward Monday’s official close. The index also applies periodic “milestone adjustments” at the end of each month, the regular season, and the postseason, layered in at 7:00 or 8:00 AM CT on the relevant morning.
One more nuance worth flagging: if the league amends a stat after a game ends (say, they rescind a penalty), that change is handled going forward as a discrete event rather than retroactively rewriting a past official close. The whole design is obsessed with settlement finality, which makes sense once you remember real money is riding on these numbers.
Why Does This Exist?
Here’s the question every skeptic asks: who is this actually for? The official answer, the one that helps grease the regulatory conversation, is hedging.
CME frames these futures as legitimate risk-management tools for businesses whose finances rise and fall with a team’s performance. Think broadcasters, arena operators, team sponsors, and local vendors. If your revenue depends on a deep playoff run and the team faceplants in November, that hurts. In theory, a business like that could take a position in these instruments to offset the fiscal downside of poor on-ice results, creating what the pros call a delta-neutral position. Ticket sales crater, but the hedge pays off, and everyone sleeps a little better. It’s a tidy, respectable-sounding story.
Or think of it from the individual perspective. Say you are a season ticket holder who loves going to the games, but throughout the year you sell a chunk of the games to help defray the cost a bit. That’s pretty normal. But what if your team is having an awful year? It’s going to be harder to sell tickets at a reasonable price. But if you short your team’s index, you could make money when they’re bad and hedge your ticket resale exposure.
Whether either of these is how these will be used, well, I’ll leave that for you to decide.
But Should it Really Exist?
And not surprisingly, many aren’t buying the hedging pitch, and critics have been notably blunt. The central accusation is that this is “gambling repackaged as finance.”
Many professionals argue these products have little to do with capital formation, investment, or economic growth, which are the things that traditionally justify calling something an investment. A stock represents a company making money and building things, throwing off dividends or capital appreciation along the way. A hockey index throws off none of that. Some say it’s largely a mechanism for moving money from one participant to another (while generating fees for the provider), which does sound an awful lot like the thing it’s insisting it isn’t.
In addition, these products bear a striking resemblance to prediction markets. They could feed the same “YOLO” mentality we’ve seen with meme stocks and crypto, potentially misleading younger, early-stage investors about what actually builds wealth. The concern isn’t just philosophical tidiness; it’s that a brokerage-account wrapper lends an air of legitimacy to what is functionally a season-long wager.
The Road Ahead
For now, this is all still a proposal sitting with the SEC, which has historically been cautious about sports-linked and prediction-market products. But filing all 32 franchises at once reads like an attempt to establish a full market standard rather than dip a toe in, and plenty of observers view approval as a matter of when, not if, given how thoroughly sports already dominate the prediction-market world.
So whether you see it as clever financial innovation or simply the sportsbook wearing a nicer suit, the puck-to-portfolio pipeline is coming. Just remember, when you buy your team, you’re not buying the team. You’re buying a very sophisticated bet on whether they have a good season. And unlike the shareholders of an actual company, you’ll be checking the box score instead of the balance sheet.
Markets / Economy
- The bond market is raising concerns, with the 30-year U.S. Treasury hitting its highest level since 2006. The S&P finished the week down -1.4%, the Nasdaq down -2.1%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 down -1.6%.
- The New York Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing Index rose to 20.6 in August from 15.6 in July and largely beat market forecasts of 11. The data showed that New York State manufacturing activity expanded for a second consecutive month and at its fastest pace since late 2021.
- The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index rose to 47.4 in August from 41.4 in July, its highest level since April 2021 and well above expectations of 25. Nearly 57% of surveyed companies reported higher activity, while only 10% recorded declines.
Stocks
- U.S. equities were in negative territory. Technology and Utilities led the decline, while Healthcare and Energy outperformed. Value stocks led growth stocks, and small caps beat large caps.
- International equities closed lower for the week. Emerging markets fared better than developed markets.
Bonds
- The 10-year Treasury bond yield increased six basis points to 4.74% during the week.
- U.S. bond markets were in negative territory this week while International bond markets were positive.
- Government bonds led for the week, followed by high-yield bonds and corporate bonds.
