- CME FutureSports Performance Indexes will underpin the world's first index-based hockey futures contracts offered by CME Group
FutureSports, the new independent index administrator transforming professional and college sports statistics into rules-based, benchmark financial indexes, and the National Hockey League (NHL), today announced an exclusive agreement providing FutureSports with official real-time NHL statistics that the company will use to create new broad-based CME FutureSports Performance Indexes (FSPI) tailored to NHL teams and players.
FutureSports Performance Indexes are benchmarks designed to systematically measure the cumulative performance of teams and athletes in prominent sports leagues. The play-by-play indexes that move throughout the course of each game within the upcoming season will provide hedging vehicles and new investment opportunities.
CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives exchange, will be listing monthly and quarterly cash-settled futures contracts, pending regulatory review, based on the CME FSPI NHL benchmarks in time for the 2026-2027 season.
Rhett Dinsdale, FutureSports Co-Founder, said: “We’ve seen genuine enthusiasm from the partners who see the potential of these indexes and futures contracts in bringing significant new risk management and trading opportunities. We are incredibly honored that the NHL has entrusted FutureSports with the real-time statistics that will drive the hockey indexes as we work with CME Group to launch the new contracts.”
Keith Wachtel, President, NHL Business, said: "Through this agreement with FutureSports, our official statistics will help power a new class of financial indexes and futures contracts that enable institutions and individuals to express a view on team and player performance in a transparent and disciplined way. We believe this collaboration represents an exciting step forward for the business of hockey and demonstrates the growing influence of sports data beyond traditional applications."
Utilizing the NHL’s official statistics, FutureSports creates transparent rules-based methodologies based on continuous, play-by-play statistical values that will underpin the indexes and futures contracts.
The NHL, FutureSports and CME Group are committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency and market confidence. FutureSports' indexes are administered using rules-based methodologies derived from official NHL statistics, helping ensure that index values are determined objectively and independently. The NHL has also established layered monitoring and other protections and collaborates closely with its partners and appropriate regulatory stakeholders to support the integrity of both the game and related financial products. The NHL supplies the underlying statistics but is not involved in the determination, calculation or governance of the indexes.
Potential participants who may want to use the contracts to hedge include third-party vendors, sponsors and endorsers, insurers, and sports apparel manufacturers. Asset managers, pension funds and professional trading firms are expected to participate in the contracts and contribute to liquidity in this new uncorrelated asset class. Individual investors will also be able to participate in the first-of-their-kind trading vehicles.
