Casino Unions Back Federal Prediction Markets Ban in Congress

Two Nevada representatives have taken the fight over sports event contracts to the House floor. Reps. Steven Horsford and Mark Amodei introduced the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act on 24 July. The federal bill would ban prediction markets from offering contracts on sports and casino-style games. Behind them stand two of the largest casino unions in the country, plus the industry’s main trade body.

The proposal mirrors a Senate measure filed in March by Adam Schiff, John Curtis and Catherine Cortez Masto. Together the two bills form a bicameral push to answer a question that courts have wrestled with for over a year. Does a contract on the outcome of a football game belong to federal commodities regulators, or to state and tribal gaming authorities?

Casino Workers Move to the Front of the Argument

UNITE HERE represents more than 100,000 workers across tribal and commercial casinos nationwide. Culinary Workers Union Local 226 covers roughly 60,000 members at resorts in Las Vegas and Reno. Both unions have endorsed a federal ban on sports prediction markets, and the American Gaming Association has done the same.

Their case rests on jobs rather than jurisdiction. A licensed casino employs dealers, cooks, servers and housekeepers under negotiated contracts. An exchange taking sports action through a phone app employs almost none of them. Union leaders argue that money drifting toward those platforms drains payrolls built over decades of bargaining.

The tax argument sits right beside it. Horsford puts the cost to states at more than $1 billion in gaming revenue already lost. That money, he says, should have funded schools, roads and public programmes. Supporters of a federal ban say prediction markets have grown too large to keep sitting outside state tax codes.

What the Federal Prediction Markets Ban Would Cover

The bill draws its line around products rather than platforms. Exchanges registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission could no longer list contracts tied to sporting events or casino-style games. Everything else in the event contract space would stay exactly where it is today.

That carve-out matters. Weather contracts, commodity hedges and economic indicators would remain under CFTC oversight, because they serve a genuine business purpose. Lawmakers pointed to a Los Angeles ice cream shop owner who used weather contracts to cover losses during a cold spell. A federal prediction markets ban aimed at sports would leave that kind of hedging untouched.

The bill carries a second clause with wider reach. It states plainly that federal law does not override state or tribal authority over gambling. States and tribes would keep the power to write and enforce their own gaming rules. The federal ban on sports prediction markets would also settle the matter by statute, sparing the CFTC a long rulemaking process on the same question.

The Platforms Push Back

Kalshi, Polymarket and their peers reject the comparison to sportsbooks. Their platforms earn fees on trading volume rather than profiting when a customer loses, which they say makes the economics fundamentally different from a bookmaker’s. Critics of a federal ban on prediction markets have leaned on that distinction throughout the dispute.

The counterpoint is scale. Sports contracts have become a dominant share of activity on several exchanges. Industry estimates put sports at the large majority of trading volume on some platforms. Regulators argue that a product drawing that much of its volume from football and basketball behaves like a sportsbook regardless of its licence.

The CFTC has so far defended its own authority. Chairman Mike Selig backed the commission’s role in February, and the agency later floated a rule that could permit sports contracts across the country. Nevada regulators have pushed the other way, taking Kalshi and Polymarket to court to keep them out of the state without gaming approval.

A Crowded Legislative Field

Horsford and Amodei are not working alone on this. Rep. Dina Titus has filed the Fair Markets and Sports Integrity Act, which would also restrict sports-linked contracts. The Event Contract Enforcement Act goes further still, reaching contracts on elections, terrorism, war and assassinations.

A fourth measure targets a different problem entirely. H.R.7004 would stop federal officials and government employees from trading prediction contracts on inside information, and Horsford has signed on as a co-sponsor. Each bill attacks a separate corner of the same market.

Where It Goes Next

Bipartisan sponsorship in both chambers gives a federal prediction markets ban a better starting position than most gambling bills get. Nevada’s delegation has cross-party agreement, the AGA is lobbying for it, and organised labour has put real weight behind it. None of that guarantees a floor vote.

The federal prediction markets ban now faces committee, where competing proposals and a sympathetic CFTC could slow it down considerably. Exchanges will fight it hard, and the constitutional arguments over state versus federal authority remain unsettled in court. Casino operators are watching billions in handle move to platforms they cannot match on price. For them, the next few months in Congress matter more than the next court ruling.