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Wall Street filing proposes first Edmonton Oilers-tied ETF in league-wide index

Photo credit: IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

By Michael Menzies

Aug 18, 2026, 09:00 EDTUpdated: Aug 17, 2026, 23:36 EDT

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The line between sports betting and traditional investments has been blurring in recent years, with the influx of online casinos and prediction markets becoming the norm in today’s culture. That could become even more muddy with a format that would seemingly combine both, a first of its kind on Wall Street.

Volatility Shares Fund has filed to create 32 separate NHL team ETFs tied to each franchise’s on-ice success.

There would be a futures contract attached to the successes of the Edmonton Oilers, one for the Columbus Blue Jackets, and so on and so forth. One for every NHL team.

But buyers wouldn’t be investing in the stake of an actual franchise, instead in the “cumulative team performance,” with the values being based on a total of 55 individual hockey statistical metrics, including wins and losses.

The index provider is FutureSports, which recently partnered with CME Group to offer sports futures contracts, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

They say each ETF would be set at a base value of 7500 points, and then fluctuate based on real-time NHL-provided stats, in-game and game-to-game. However, unlike other investments, the index would reset to that same base value at the end of every season.

What those 55 individual stat categories are, and how they’ll be weighted, was not disclosed in the filing. The tickers, the listing exchange, the launch date, and the expense ratio were all blank for the time being.

The index itself is not investable, but each fund gets its exposure by holding futures contracts that reference the index. It would trade on a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-registered exchange, with a policy of putting at least 80 per cent of net assets into those index-linked instruments, as stated by ETF BFF.

This proposal was filed on Friday and has not received approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the CFTC. However, the goal is to have this underway before the puck drops on the 2026-27 NHL regular season.

As described in the Chicago Sun-Times article published Saturday:

“Unlike contracts on prediction markets, futures focus on asset price changes and require margin, or collateral, of several thousand dollars. Prediction market contracts are yes-or-no wagers on whether a real world event will happen and typically trade between $0.01 and $1.00.
“CME said the sports futures will be available in standard-sized contracts at 10 times the value of the underlying NHL indexes, while microsized contracts geared for retail traders will be 1/10 the value of those indexes. And participants can trade around the clock.”

The NHL published a media release on Aug. 4 that says they’ve established “layered monitoring and other protections” to support the integrity of the games and related financial products.

“The NHL supplies the underlying statistics but is not involved in the determination, calculation or governance of the indexes,” the release states.

This would be the first North American sport offering, just like futures contracts for canola, oil and gas, or the S&P 500. It would be another investment angle, but also act as a hedging tool, CME says, for sponsors, broadcasters, arena operators and vendors to manage the financial risk tied to a team’s performance.

It would’ve been unfathomable just a few years ago, but now it seems like a reality.

Michael Menzies is an Oilersnation columnist and co-host of PreGaming and Oilersnation After Dark. He’s also been the play-by-play voice of the Bonnyville Pontiacs in the AJHL since 2019. With seven years of news experience as the Editor-at-Large of Lakeland Connect in Bonnyville, Menzies collects vinyl, books, and stomach issues. Follow him on X at Menzies_4.

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