The Indian Gaming Association wrapped up 2025 by looking ahead to the fight against prediction-market sports betting.
IGA hosted its final 2025 New Normal webinar that featured Amanda Fischer, policy director and chief operating officer of Better Markets, a financial market advocacy group, and tribal gaming attorney Scott Crowell.
The discussion hosted by IGA Conference Chair Victor Rocha and Jason Giles, IGA’s executive director, discussed the risks posed by prediction markets, the breakdown in federal oversight, and the growing threat these platforms present to tribal gaming rights, state authority, and compact integrity. The conversation outlined what tribes, regulators, and policymakers should expect in the months ahead.
Tribal leaders and gaming regulators argue sports prediction markets are illegal, while operators maintain they derive their legality under regulations of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
Fischer, a former chief of staff to the chair at the SEC, told the panel her organization got concerned when prediction market operator Kalshi started offering election-related markets in 2024.
“We predicted that these contracts would spread into other markets, including sports, and unfortunately our worst fears have become realized in the last year or so,” Fischer said. “We’re focused on building relationships where we can educate policy makers and the media about why this is bad for consumers, states, tribes, and the financial system, how it will distract the CFTC from its core mission, and perhaps contribute to another financial crisis.”
Giles argued that the CFTC is complicit in letting prediction markets take hold without trying to stop them. He called it frightening, because Wall Street and a lot of speculators are pouring money into Kalshi, Polymarket, and Crypto.com and now President Donald Trump is getting into the prediction market business.
“Prediction markets continue to grow, while the CFTC struggles to define its jurisdiction and enforce meaningful limits,” Giles said. “This regulatory gap has allowed event-contract platforms to present themselves as financial products, while operating in ways that resemble gambling. As a result, courts, states, and tribal governments are now left to confront issues that should have been resolved through clear federal oversight. The uncertainty created by this failure is now shaping legal, political, and economic debates across the country.”
Fischer called it “troubling” and said that when she worked at the SEC, the crypto industry used the same playbook: a lack of regulatory clarity, existing rules that can’t possibly cover them, and some novel technology that doesn’t fit neatly within regulations. They would rather ask for forgiveness rather than permission, she said.
“What they’re offering isn’t innovation, but regulatory arbitrage and breaking laws and hoping that agencies tasked with enforcing those laws are too slow and hamstrung to enforce the law as it exists.”
A lot of venture-capital-backed funders did it with crypto and now that they’ve won that battle are moving into prediction markets.
“The CFTC has the tools to shut it down like they could have financial derivatives or regulated them in the lead up to 2008 (and the housing crisis), but we’ve seen so much capturing, marketing, and lobbying power that it’s now down to states, tribes, and advocates to enforce the law,” Fischer said.
Crowell said Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood have seized on the argument that there is a self-certification provision that somehow makes it legal. They tried to defend their election prediction markets as not being gaming by saying it’s not like sports betting.
“As soon as the ink is dry on the decision, they self-certify for the Super Bowl, then March Madness, and virtually every sports-betting product on your typical regulated sports wagering app,” Crowell said. “They say that as long as the CFTC doesn’t say no to their self-certification, they have the green light to do it and that it preempts federal and state law.”
Even if they were shut down tomorrow, they have hundreds of millions in profits and will move onto something else, Crowell said.
Crowell is frustrated, because it’s between the court battles are between the state regulators and operators and nothing involves the CFTC, which he calls “asleep at the switch” and not doing their job.
Crowell noted that states are contemplating litigation against the CFTC, which he called the “real wrongdoer here.”
Fischer said the statutory tools of the CFTC, its staffing, its understanding of gambling markets, and its ability to impose age limits and other consumer protections all add up to it’s being “unfit for purpose, calling it “a round peg in a square hole.” The self-certification process was designed for agricultural interests to get quick approval for new futures contracts for corn, cotton, and other commodities, allowing farmers to hedge the risk of a drought or poor harvest season.
The CFTC has no tools to detect if an NBA player is deliberately missing free throws to juice a prediction market contract, Fischer said. It can’t monitor every college basketball game, when they oversee trillions of dollars of other markets that have an important role in American’s lives, she added.
Money has infiltrated the discussion in Congress on the issue, according to Fischer, who called it “staggering” to the extent that she’s never seen this scale of influence.
“The American people aren’t clamoring for this,” Fischer said. “If you do polls of the issues voters care about, they don’t care about crypto. A minority of people have a ton of money at stake and a lot of the venture-capital funds that funded these crypto projects have now pivoted to prediction markets rather than invest in new technology and R&D and industries to make health care or energy better. They’re dumping a ton of money on the fragilities in our legal and democratic framework and how we exploit them to make a quick buck.”
Fischer said those groups are hiring some of the best law firms in Washington, D.C., and across the country and are flooding the zone with lobbyists. They’re explicit that if members of Congress don’t vote for them, they’ll give money to their opponents.
“They’re muddying the waters and creating uncertainty that time-tested laws don’t apply to them,” Fischer said. “I think it’s a winnable fight, but it’s going to require a lot of coalition work and patient explaining to policy makers about what these issues are.”
The amount of coverage in the media is exploding, Fischer said. It’s important to explain to policy makers the lost state tax revenue and that it would take “all but three sentences to shut this down,” she added of Congress.
“It’s going to be a huge battle, but crypto isn’t going to come away empty handed,” Fischer said. “They want something and I think for Democratic members, it’s a fair price of admission to address this prediction market issue, particularly if it’s just related to sports. It would be a complete waste if Congress went through the hard work of reopening the Commodity Exchange Act and didn’t address this issue through legislation.”
Crowell warned that tribes and others shouldn’t think this ends with sports betting. Operators’ theory is that they can offer any product, including slot machines, craps, and roulette. “It isn’t just about sports betting. It’s about them dominating and replacing the regulated gaming market with their unregulated prediction market products.”
That same issue was addressed by Nevada Gaming Control Board Chair Mike Dreitzer at a law conference earlier this month.
