Schiff, Curtis seek to bar casino-style contracts at CFTC venues

Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and John Curtis (R-Utah) are set to introduce a bipartisan bill Monday that would prohibit sports betting and other casino-style contracts on prediction markets overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The measure would bar CFTC-regulated venues from listing sports-betting and similar gaming contracts. It targets event contracts on federally regulated platforms and aims to keep gambling-style products off derivatives markets. “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 stated.

As we reported earlier, Utah passed HB243 defining proposition bets as gambling and sent it to the governor, a ban aimed at sports prop wagers on Kalshi, Polymarket and similar platforms. The measure focuses on in-game events, not final outcomes; Gov. Spencer Cox said he intends to sign it.

Sports wagers are a major source of trading activity on prediction platforms. Last week, sports-related contracts accounted for 47.7% of Polymarket’s weekly notional volume and 78.8% for Kalshi. By dollar value, sports betting generated about $1.2 billion in weekly notional trading volume on Polymarket and $2.6 billion on Kalshi.

The bill follows another proposal from Schiff. On March 10, he introduced the DEATH BETS Act to bar CFTC-regulated markets from listing contracts tied to war, terrorism, assassination and individual death.

Regulators have been reassessing how to oversee event contracts. On March 12, the CFTC issued a staff advisory that treated event contracts on prediction venues as a financial asset class and opened an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to gather public input on how the Commodity Exchange Act should apply to these markets. Kalshi is registered with the CFTC as a Designated Contract Market.

Court actions have tested the line between federal and state authority. On March 9, an Ohio judge ruled that Kalshi had not shown the Commodity Exchange Act would necessarily preempt Ohio’s sports gambling laws or that the sports contracts at issue fell under the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction. In Nevada, a state judge on Friday temporarily blocked Kalshi from offering sports, election and entertainment event contracts for 14 days, finding state regulators were reasonably likely to prevail on claims the markets violated Nevada gambling law.