Prediction Markets · Page 7 of 14
Event contracts, the exchanges that list them, and the running dispute between federal derivatives regulation and state gambling law over who is in charge.
Senator Cynthia Lummis narrowed the bill's decentralised finance provisions specifically to answer tribal worries about prediction markets. The Indian Gaming Association says that misses the point: what it wants is text saying federal commodities law does not preempt tribal gaming law, and that exchanges cannot list contracts on sports or casino games.
The company has gone to federal court in Ohio, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Washington, asking each to rule that state gambling law cannot reach a CFTC-regulated contract. It is the first prediction-market operator to sue pre-emptively across a whole group of states rather than wait to be sued.
The company says it does not believe the contracts break state law, and it has stopped offering them in Michigan anyway. In exchange the state has agreed not to enforce its sports betting laws against Robinhood while the appeals run. Its broader prediction markets hub stays open.
The ANJ is looking at the front-of-shirt deal between the Ligue 1 club and a company that now runs its own event-contracts exchange, according to L'Equipe, the French sports daily. France blocked Polymarket in July, and the question this raises is whether a prediction-market operator can be a football sponsor in a country where it cannot take a bet.
Told by regulators in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania that it could not offer both, Underdog has chosen its CFTC-registered event contracts over the draft games that built the company. Drafts close in those states on Wednesday evening, after the NFL season kicks off.
HB 5811 would strike the exchange wager tax Illinois enacted in its budget less than three months ago, along with the definition that brought prediction markets inside the Sports Wagering Act. The tax is already being challenged in court by Kalshi and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the bill would not end that fight.
The temporary order we reported in July carried $120,000 a day. The preliminary injunction that replaced it on 1 September carries more than four times that, and tells Kalshi which geolocation vendor category it must use.
Five days after the Ninth Circuit split from the Third, New Jersey has filed for certiorari, one day before its deadline. The question is whether a federal commodities registration lets a company offer sports betting in every state while following the gambling law of none.
The fight over whether prediction markets are finance or gambling has looked like a jurisdictional argument between regulators. CNN's analysis puts a number on what it decides in practice, and the number is a consumer protection question.
Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal report that Donald Trump Jr's 1789 Capital is leading a $1bn round valuing Polymarket at $21bn. It comes in the same week a federal appeals court and two Canadian regulators decided its core product is gambling, not finance.
A federal appeals court has rejected the argument on which the entire prediction market industry rests, holding that a sporting result is not the kind of event the Commodity Exchange Act was written to cover. It is the clearest defeat Kalshi has suffered, and it points directly at the Supreme Court.
Five block trades on Louisiana State University's season pay out exactly the coach's national championship bonus. This is the clearest evidence yet that sports event contracts hedge something real, and it did not come from a retail trader.
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