CFTC 体育合约争议再起，公众评论聚焦监管边界

The fight over sports event contracts is back in front of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), this time through the public comment docket for the agency’s proposed rewrite of Regulation 40.11, the rule governing prediction market contracts deemed contrary to the public interest.

With comments due July 27, DeFi Rate reviewed 87 unique written comments filed in the docket as of Friday afternoon. The response is far smaller than the CFTC’s earlier prediction market advance rulemaking, which drew thousands of comments. But this docket is more focused on a central question now facing the agency: whether sports event contracts should be treated as federally regulated products or as state- and tribal-regulated gambling.

Roughly one-third of the reviewed written comments appear to be template-style retail submissions aligned with Kalshi’s public advocacy tool, urging the CFTC to preserve contract-by-contract review, recognize offshore-market risks and allow mainstream sports contracts based on final scores, point spreads, season outcomes and player or team statistics.

But some of the most substantive filings push in the opposite direction. Tribes, state lawmakers, gaming regulators and consumer advocates warned that the proposal could create a federally sanctioned sports-betting bypass, while sports-data and integrity commenters pressed the CFTC to require reliable settlement data, market monitoring and stronger information-sharing if sports contracts are allowed.

The CFTC’s 40.11 rewrite

The proposal would amend Regulation 40.11, which implements the Commodity Exchange Act’s special rule for event contracts involving gaming, war, terrorism, assassination, unlawful activity and similar matters.

Under the proposal, the CFTC would define “gaming,” adopt a settlement-focused test for when a contract “involves” one of the listed activities and apply a multi-factor public interest analysis before determining whether a contract may be listed or cleared.

For sports, the proposal would not impose a categorical ban. It would leave room for broad, objectively settled markets such as game outcomes, point spreads, tournament advancement and season results, while treating injury markets, officiating outcomes, discrete in-game actions, fights or altercations and pre-collegiate sports as higher-risk categories.

That distinction is what drew much of the docket’s response. Supporters urged the CFTC to preserve a pathway for mainstream sports contracts, while critics argued the proposal would effectively authorize sports wagering through federally regulated exchanges.

Kalshi users press CFTC to preserve sports access

Individual traders accounted for the largest share of comments in the docket, with many comments following a similar structure in support of preserving access to sports event contracts.

Kalshi posted a public advocacy page titled “Tell the CFTC to Get the Prediction Market Rule Right.” The page asks users about their background, how they use prediction markets, which parts of the proposed rule they support and which sports markets they follow, then says it will draft a personalized comment and submit it to Regulations.gov.

The comments generally support contract-by-contract review and argue that regulated exchanges are preferable to offshore prediction market platforms. They also embrace the CFTC’s proposed distinction between mainstream sports contracts based on final scores, spreads, tournament outcomes or season-long statistics and higher-risk markets tied to injuries, youth sports, fights, deaths, war, terrorism or discrete in-game events.

Tribes warn of conflict with IGRA and compacts

Tribal opposition came from several governments and tribal gaming regulators, including the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians in California, the Tonto Apache Tribe in Arizona, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin and the Guidiville Rancheria in California. Their filings converged on the same basic argument: sports event contracts are gaming products, and the CFTC should not use derivatives law to override tribal sovereignty, tribal-state compacts or the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA).

The Thlopthlocco Tribal Town of Oklahoma tried to separate ordinary financial event contracts from sports and casino-style products. The CEA should not be read to displace “IGRA, Tribal-State compacts, state gaming programs, or decades of consumer-protection and sports-integrity regulation,” the tribe wrote, urging the CFTC to prevent “sports wagering and casino-style gaming from being relabeled as federally listed event contracts.”

Other tribal filings attacked the proposal’s definition of gaming more directly. The Seneca-Cayuga Nation Office of the Gaming Commissioner in Oklahoma said the CFTC’s definition does not include the core gambling elements of “chance, reward, and consideration,” while the Spirit Lake Gaming Commission in North Dakota said sports contracts still have a value dependent on sporting outcomes and constitute sports betting regardless of how they are described.

The tribal comments also objected to the process, arguing that the CFTC had not conducted meaningful government-to-government consultation before proposing a rule that could affect tribal gaming rights. Minnesota’s Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe said the CFTC should withdraw the proposal and “refrain from advancing any proposed rule that would impact the regulated gaming industry,” or at minimum reaffirm that sports betting and other gambling on federal exchanges are contrary to the public interest.

State lawmakers and regulators warn against federal preemption

The National Conference of State Legislatures, the bipartisan organization representing state legislatures, urged the CFTC to define sports prediction markets as gaming and preserve state authority over sports betting under Murphy v. NCAA. NCSL said prediction markets should be treated as gaming because they allow users to speculate on events where financial gains or losses are determined by chance-based outcomes, and it urged the CFTC to interpret “gaming” broadly enough to include event contracts that function as sports wagers.

NCSL also asked the CFTC to state in the regulatory text, not just the preamble, that Rule 40.11 does not displace or preempt broader state gambling or gaming laws. The group said 39 states have legalized sports betting through their own legislative processes, while others have chosen to prohibit it, and argued that prediction market platforms should not be able to replicate state-regulated wagering products while bypassing state licensing, consumer-protection and revenue systems.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board raised a similar objection, arguing that sports event contracts could compete with legal sportsbooks without the taxes, licensing rules, self-exclusion systems, responsible-gaming programs and integrity surveillance that apply to regulated sports wagering. The board said Pennsylvania’s gaming industry generated nearly $6.8 billion in 2025 revenue and nearly $3 billion in direct tax revenue, including $602.5 million from sports wagering, which is taxed at 36% of gross revenue in the state.

Tax-policy researchers at the Urban Institute raised a similar fiscal concern, arguing that the CFTC’s public-interest analysis should account for whether sports event contracts substitute for state-regulated sports wagering and erode tax revenues that support public services. The comment pointed to Illinois, Kentucky and North Carolina as early examples of states trying to address prediction market competition through licensing restrictions, transaction-fee taxes or sports-wagering treatment.

Commenters point to prediction market uses beyond sports

Beyond the sports fight, several companies and market-infrastructure commenters urged the CFTC to preserve room for event contracts tied to commercial data, public information and objectively settled real-world outcomes.