The gaming industry’s fight against prediction markets is bringing together some unlikely allies.
Commercial casinos, Native American tribes, organized labor and lawmakers presented a united front at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas this week, escalating a coordinated campaign against sports event contracts nationwide.
American Gaming Association CEO Bill Miller told G2E attendees Tuesday that the trade group is operating on “war-time footing” against prediction markets. The industry’s largest annual conference featured back-to-back main-stage sessions focused on the sector.
Commercial, tribal groups band together
Miller joined tribal gaming leaders Monday to discuss a coordinated legal and political response to prediction markets, which tribes argue threaten their sovereignty and gaming exclusivity.
The coalition widened Tuesday to include organized labor and lawmakers, with UNITE HERE President Gwen Mills, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Chairman Rodney Butler and Nevada Rep. Steven Horsford joining Miller.
“UNITE HERE, the tribal gaming industry, and the commercial gaming industry are standing side-by-side in a campaign to end illegal prediction market gambling,” Mills said.
UNITE HERE represents more than 100,000 workers at tribal and commercial casinos and has urged Congress to prohibit sports and casino-style prediction contracts. The AGA and Indian Gaming Association made their own joint appeal to Congress in January.
Momentum is against prediction markets
During Tuesday’s panel, AGA Vice President Tres York said 45 of 50 state attorneys general are on record opposing sports event contracts. He asserted that states have prevailed in 38 of 43 related state and federal court rulings.
“It’s a very broad coalition,” York said. “This is obviously a states’ rights issue, state consumer protection issue, tribal sovereignty issue, and so that’s what the states are actively defending.”
An AGA survey released in May found 21 of 26 senior gaming executives considered sports event contracts a “very significant” risk to the regulated gaming industry. Top casino executives echoed those concerns during their own panel Tuesday.
United tribes want NIGC involved
Prediction markets are also bringing together tribal interests that have not always been aligned.
“Sometimes California is seen as the golden goose, but really this entry of illegal activity has done the one thing that they can’t afford to have happen, which is unify California Tribes,” said James Siva, chairman of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association. “In California, we remember our history and we’re willing to do whatever it takes to protect that history.”
California is home to more than 100 federally recognized tribes with sometimes competing political interests. In 2022, California tribes helped defeat a ballot initiative backed by DraftKings, FanDuel and other AGA members that sought to legalize online sports betting.
Tribes are also seeking more support from federal regulators. Indian Gaming Association Chairman David Bean called the National Indian Gaming Commission, which oversees tribal gaming, “surprisingly quiet” in the fight and said he “wishes the NIGC would be as supportive as the CFTC is of prediction markets.”
In an unusual step for a federal regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sued multiple states that have sought to regulate event contracts under their gambling laws.
Prediction markets spiral toward SCOTUS
Federal appeals courts in the Sixth and Ninth circuits have recently sided with states seeking to regulate sports prediction markets, while the Third Circuit ruled the other way in a New Jersey case. Litigation over sports event contracts remains ongoing in around 20 states.
New Jersey has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision, and York expects the justices to resolve the split.
“With this significant of a circuit split, I think the Supreme Court is likely to take it up to resolve it in one way or the other,” York said. “So at this point, the question will just be when.”
