A former staff member for a House of Representatives committee that passed a law sports betting prediction market operators are using as their legal justification said Congress had no intent of offering nationwide wagering when it passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
Amanda Fischer, currently the policy director and COO at Better Markets, helped formulate positions on key issues and craft amendments during House committee mark-ups and whip support for policy positions. She also served as the ranking member’s chief policy strategist on matters related to the capital markets and later as the deputy staff director on the Committee on Financial Services that recommended reforms related to consumer finance, banking, housing, capital markets, and insurance matters, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that is backing prediction markets in court cases against states across the country.
Fischer was a guest on the most recent webcast of the Indian Gaming Association, which has rallied against sports betting prediction markets as a threat to tribal sovereignty and revenue.
“I can’t emphasize enough how much (the people at the CFTC) have strayed from their mission, which was expanded over the 2008 financial crisis to cover financial and commodities derivatives,” Fischer said. “I was around for the Dodd Frank Act in 2010 as a staffer and sat in constant meetings and congressional hearings and nobody once mentioned sports gambling in the oversight framework. If that was the intent of Congress, they would have duked it out. It would have been discussed, but it was completely silent.”
Opponents of prediction markets argue the lack of congressional intent will be key when the cases ultimately make it to the Supreme Court. By enabling prediction markets to offer sports wagering, Fischer said the CFTC has no way to provide the oversight expected of the agency.
“The CFTC at its high-water mark had 600 staffers and they have lost about a quarter of that since the Trump inauguration,” Fischer said. “They oversee about $500 trillion in financial and commodity derivatives and have probably 150 enforcement staff in total. Keep in mind that every time you see a 4X product on Facebook or gold futures, these are the folks supposed to be going out and getting redress for people who get scammed by these financial products. They are also supposed to monitor the biggest banks and and the complex financial products they are engaged in.
“The reason my organization in Better Markets cares about this is not because we have strong feelings about gambling,” Fischer said. “We don’t. We saw what happened when the CFTC was asleep at the wheel leading up to the 2008 financial crisis and the damage that can impact the greater economy when they lose focus.”
The lack of CFTC oversight has been seen in trades where there was inside information about the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro by the U.S. and the ouster of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who was killed in a bombing attack. A U.S. soldier was charged in the Maduro case.
“The CFTC is taking a victory lap after this soldier was arrested for allegedly trading on Maduro’s capture,” Fischer said. “All we’ve seen so far is this one instance, even though there’s constant reporting of people getting outsized trading gains. We were concerned about the CFTC even before they tried to take crypto and prediction markets over, but now they have these new areas and there’s no way they can monitor the markets they are supposed to be monitoring.”
Jason Giles, executive director of IGA, called the Maduro wager “a drop in the bucket” and cited the massive betting ahead of every time President Trump announces an agreement has been reached.
Fischer said the soldier traded on Polymarket, when it should have been geoblocked from U.S. users. In 2022, the Biden Administration fined Polymarket and put them under a consent order that required monitoring. She said the Trump Administration stopped their investigation of Polymarket.
“The CFTC is not monitoring compliance with the 2022 consent order,” Fischer said. “Polymarket is trying to get regulated and enter the United States. When I was at a regulatory agency, we looked at this and said, how are you fit to enter into the United States when you can’t geoblock your global platform? Rather than proof of concept that the CFTC is a strong regulator, it raises questions why people can access this platform.
“The other policy issue wrapped into this is these platforms say they are well regulated under U.S. law and that you can’t bet on death, terrorism, or assassination,” Fischer said. “But when people in the can access the global platform so easily and their customer identification checks aren’t catching Americans, what is going on here? The Maduro issue raises more questions than answers.”
In the webinar, Fischer also took aim at CFTC Chair Michael Selig, who came under fire last week by American Gaming Association CEO Bill Miller who referred to him as a joke.
The CFTC is taking a more assertive role in prediction markets, but its approach is raising fundamental questions about oversight, authority, and enforcement. Under Selig, the agency has signaled support for event contracts while withdrawing prior restrictions, leaving critical issues unresolved. Questions around insider information, market integrity, and the limits of federal jurisdiction are no longer theoretical, said IGA Conference Chair Victor Rocha in setting up the conversation with Fischer.
Fischer said those opposed to what the CFTC is doing “have the wind at their backs, because it’s so transparent what they are doing” and inconsistent with the law. She said there are a lot of bipartisan coalitions building.
Selig has claimed sports falls within the CFTC jurisdiction without the agency having the regulations in place that allow it, Fischer pointed out. That shows a prior bias and in comments filed to the CFTC, there’s a lot of opposition to sports betting contracts, she noted.
“There’s a lot of legal infirmities to what they’re proposing, and I think they are violating their own rules. It is clear they arrived retrofitted the justification to meet the answer rather than a good-faith consideration of what they ought to do.”
Overall, Fischer said judges across the country seem “highly skeptical” of what the prediction markets are claiming.
“Prediction markets are in a precarious position right now,” Fischer said. “We see them announcing these voluntary policies and how they don’t need to be further regulated and everything is okay. We see all of their hiring decisions and pushback against major media articles. But honestly, people are upset with young people getting overwhelmed with advertising. That groundswell does affect the politics of this.”
