Tribes closed door meeting with CFTC leads to frustration, not solutions to event contracts
At least a dozen tribal leaders held a recent meeting with Michael Selig, chairman and the sole commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the agency that considers sports-event contracts as trading rather than gambling.
But sports event contracts offered by prediction markets are seen as a threat to tribal sovereignty, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, and tribal-state compacts, which grant tribes exclusivity over gaming.
On their agenda, tribal leaders wanted to discuss recent CFTC rulemaking on prediction markets, as well as their concerns around sports, political, and any other type of event contracts and prediction market advertising nationally and on tribal land.
During the closed-door meeting on Monday at CFTC headquarters in Washington, Selig and his staff declined to discuss their proposed prediction market rules with tribal leaders.
“All they would say was, ‘We can’t talk about the rule right now,’” Jason Giles, executive director of the Indiana Gaming Association (IGA), said Wednesday during the IGA’s New Normal webinar. “I’m at a loss about what law or anything is preventing [them from discussing] their ruling that they’ve taken comment on, that’s already been filed and the comment period has ended. I don’t know what their strategy is there.
In June, the CFTC published a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking public comment on amendments to agency Regulation 40.11 and the addition of Appendix F to part 40 due to the growth of contracts for trading by CFTC-registered entities, including sports event contracts.
Giles asked Scott Crowell, with Crowell Law Office Tribal Advocacy Group, what the recent losses in federal court in California and other states meant to the agency’s credibility.
“What credibility?” Crowell responded. “It’s had no credibility since (Selig) was appointed. He lied right out of the box, telling Congress he would let the courts resolve the sports betting issue, then immediately directed his legal staff to file an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit litigation and a spate of lawsuits against states looking to enforce their laws.”