DCM (Designated Contract Market)

Designation is what allows a prediction market to offer contracts to retail customers across the United States. It is a registration against a set of core principles rather than a product-by-product approval, which is why a venue can hold the status for years and then list contracts nobody contemplated when it was granted.

That gap between the status and the product is the source of the current dispute. Exchanges treat designation as a licence covering whatever they list; state regulators treat it as a financial registration that cannot silently authorise sports betting. The core principles do impose real obligations, including trade surveillance, position monitoring and rules against manipulation, and those obligations are the strongest part of the exchanges' argument that they are supervised venues rather than unlicensed bookmakers.

Affiliated operators complicate the picture further, since a consumer brand may route trades to a designated contract market operated by a related entity, so the registered venue and the customer-facing app are not always the same company.