By Krystal Hur
A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators introduced legislation Monday to prohibit entities regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, including prediction-market exchanges Kalshi and Polymarket's U.S. platform, from listing contracts related to sporting events.
"The CFTC is greenlighting these markets and even promoting their growth, " Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) said. "It's time for Congress to step in and eliminate this backdoor, which violates state consumer protections, intrudes upon tribal sovereignty and offers no public revenue."
The legislation is the first bipartisan Senate bill seeking to regulate prediction markets. The bill also seeks to prohibit "casino-style games" from being listed on the platforms, such as slot machine games, video poker, blackjack and bingo.
"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," said Sen. John Curtis (R., Utah), the proposed bill's co-sponsor.
While Kalshi and Polymarket offer yes-or-no wagers tied to everything from politics to the weather to pop culture, much of the trading activity is focused on professional and college sports, putting the platforms in competition with betting sites such as FanDuel and DraftKings.
"Banning sports on regulated prediction markets would just push this behavior offshore, where no regulation exists," said Elisabeth Diana, a Kalshi spokeswoman. "It's clear this bill is motivated by casino interests that are threatened by competition."
Polymarket and the CFTC didn't respond to requests for comment.
Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
DraftKings stock rose 1.2% on Monday. Shares of Flutter Entertainment, the parent company of FanDuel, gained 4.4%.
Lawmakers, states and federal regulators have sparred in recent months over how event contracts on prediction-market platforms, including on sports, should be regulated, and by whom.
The CFTC has argued that the states have no regulatory control over prediction-market platforms, with the commission in February filing a "friend of the court" brief in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that it had exclusive jurisdiction over the commodities-derivatives market, including event contracts.
Nevada, the country's gambling capital, on Friday won a temporary restraining order to prevent prediction-market platform Kalshi from offering event-based contracts related to sports, elections and entertainment.
Just a few days earlier, Arizona filed criminal charges against the parent companies of Kalshi, accusing them of operating an illegal gambling business without a license. Kalshi sent a letter to Arizona's attorney general imploring that the state withdraw the charges.
While most U.S. professional sports leagues have embraced sports gambling, which is legal in most states, some have been more wary of prediction markets and their ability to identify suspicious activity that could subject their games to manipulation and insider information.
Major League Baseball, the professional league still reckoning with its biggest betting scandal in decades, recently signed a licensing deal with Polymarket, which as the league's official prediction-markets platform will have exclusive access to its data and iconography. Polymarket also agreed to work with MLB to police baseball wagers on its platform.
States including Massachusetts and Michigan have sued Kalshi, arguing that the nascent and fast-growing industry offers illegal sports betting. Polymarket filed a lawsuit against Michigan in early March in a bid to prevent the state from enforcing its state gambling laws against the platform.
Kalshi in recent months has sued states including Arizona, Iowa and Utah to stop what it believed were impending bans. The company said its event contracts were regulated by federal jurisdiction, rather than the states.
Write to Krystal Hur at krystal.hur@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 23, 2026 16:30 ET (20:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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