Tribal gaming leaders say prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket threaten their way of life. They made the comments at last week's G2E conference, also known as the Global Gaming Conference, in Las Vegas.
Tribal gaming is heavily regulated, much like the rest of the traditional gambling industry. However, prediction market companies have, for the most part, flown under federal regulators' radar.
That’s why tribes have either independently sued — or collaborated with state attorneys generals' lawsuits against — prediction market companies,
in an attempt to regulate the ever-expanding gaming space.
“They really don't like when tribes point out that, for 40 years, [and] even before that, we had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court just to get bingo,” said Jason Giles, a tribal citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and executive director of the Indian Gaming Association (IGA), during the conference.
Recently, the 6th and 9th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals allowed Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee to regulate prediction markets. Now these companies are banned from those states. As such, more cases are expected to follow. In fact, both tribal gaming leaders and the IGA say they are willing to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court to preserve their sovereignty over the issue.
