Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis introduced bipartisan legislation on Monday that would bar prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket from offering contracts tied to sporting events and casino-style games. The bill amends the Commodity Exchange Act to prohibit any CFTC-regulated entity from listing or facilitating transactions linked to athletic competitions — effectively ending the sports betting product that has driven the explosive growth of both platforms.
The timing is pointed. Kalshi's Super Bowl trading volume reached over $1 billion this year, a roughly 2,700% increase year-over-year. Sports-related contracts account for approximately 89% of Kalshi's fee revenue. A federal ban would not merely slow these companies — it would gut their core business. The bill doesn't touch FanDuel or DraftKings, which operate under state gambling regulations rather than CFTC jurisdiction. That asymmetry is exactly what the senators are trying to close. Schiff's framing is direct: prediction contracts are sports bets with different paperwork, currently operating in all fifty states in what he describes as a clear violation of existing law.
The politics are complicated. The Trump administration has been sympathetic to prediction market companies, and the CFTC under Chairman Mike Selig has actively defended their expansion, including signing an MOU with MLB just last week. Kalshi is calling the bill a casino lobby protection racket, and they're not entirely wrong — DraftKings and FanDuel both benefit from keeping a federally regulated competitor out of their market. But the opposing argument has merit too: Kalshi's Super Bowl volume and its rapid penetration into college sports markets have moved faster than any regulatory framework could accommodate.
This is the seventh attempt at federal prediction market legislation this year. State-level pressure has been mounting in parallel — Arizona filed criminal charges against Kalshi earlier this month, and a Nevada court issued a temporary restraining order on Friday blocking the company from offering sports contracts in the state. The question now is whether Congress has the votes, and whether Trump would sign a bill that cuts against companies his administration has consistently backed. The $35 that Chance the Rapper won against his manager this week was more legally certain than this bill becoming law.
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