A bipartisan duo of senators introduced legislation to ban sports betting on prediction sites like Kalshi and Polymarket, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and John Curtis (R-Utah) introduced legislation that would prohibit entities regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from listing contracts related to sports.
“The CFTC is green-lighting these markets and even promoting their growth,” Schiff said. “It’s time for Congress to step in and eliminate this backdoor, which violates state consumer protections, intrudes upon tribal sovereignty and offers no public revenue.”
The legislation comes as concerns increase about the rise of sports betting, in general. The bill would also prohibit “casino-style games” such as blackjack, poker and slot machines on the platforms.
“Too many young people in Utah are getting exposed to addictive sports betting and casino-style gaming contracts that belong under state control, not under federal regulators,” Curtis, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, said.
Both Kalshi and Polymarket offer yes-or-no wagers for politics, and just about anything a person cna think to make a prediction bet on. But much of their wagers are related to both professional and college-level sports. That puts it in direct competition with state-regulated sports betting giants such as FanDuel and Draft Kings.
In recent months, lawmakers have disagreed about how to regulate prediction markets and which agencies should do so. The CFTC has said that states have no control of the platforms and it filed a “friend of the court” briefing with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in which it argued that exclusive jurisdiction of the commodities-derivatives market, which includes event contracts.
But Nevada recently won a temporary restraining order to prevent Kalshi from offering event-based contracts related to sports, politics and entertainment. And Arizona filed criminal charges against its parent companies, accusing them of running Kalshi as an illegal gambling company without a license.
At. the same time, Major League Baseball announced an official partnership with Polymarket, saying it has a memorandum of understanding with the chairman of the CFTC to “further protect the integrity of baseball by ensuring swift response to incidents and anticipating emerging trends more strongly.”
In October, the National Hockey League announced a partnership with Kalshi and Polymarket.
In recent months, Polymarket has come under fire for allowing bets on President Donald Trump’s military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of the country’s president Nicolás Maduro.
The prediction markets came under further scrutiny when people made bets on the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
One report said that six accounts made more than $1.2 million in profit before the strikes in Iran.
Schiff and Curtis’ bill is not the only piece of legislation proposing to rein in betting markets.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation earlier this year to prohibit federal elected officials, political appointees, employees of the executive branch and congressional staff from buying, selling or exchanging prediction market contracts on outcomes related to government policy, action or political outcomes.
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