To: National Indian Gaming Commission From: [Insert Tribal Gaming Commission] Re: Sports and Events Wagering Is Illegally Being Offered On Indian Lands Date: {Insert Date}
Dear NIGC Office of General Counsel:
The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), the federal agency most commonly known for its regulation of commodities like pork bellies, cattle, and corn, is allowing futures contracts on sporting events by patrons on Indian lands. This extraordinary turn of events displaces Tribal and State Gaming regulatory bodies out of the regulation of sports wagering. By allowing such contracts to exist on the market, the CFTC is permitting the conduct of unregulated sports betting, circumventing legal frameworks designed to protect tribal sovereignty, state rights, and consumer welfare. On February 5 th of this year, acting CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham announced a change in policy to the Commission’s approach to regulation and oversight of prediction markets, including sports-related event contracts: “Unfortunately, the undue delay and anti-innovation policies of the past several years have severely restricted the CFTC’s ability to pivot to common-sense regulation of prediction markets. Despite my repeated dissents and other objections since 2022, the current Commission interpretations regarding event contracts are a sinkhole of legal uncertainty and an inappropriate constraint on the new Administration. Prediction markets are an important new frontier in harnessing the power of markets to assess sentiment to determine probabilities that can bring truth to the Information Age. The CFTC must break with its past hostility to innovation and take a forward-looking approach to the possibilities of the future.”
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