LAS VEGAS - Tribal gaming nations are strengthening the legal and political fight against sports prediction markets, securing a federal appeals court victory that gives tribes a separate avenue to challenge contracts offered on their lands without their authorization.
- Tribal leaders are combining litigation, congressional advocacy, and industry alliances to defend sovereignty and gaming revenues.
- The Blue Lake ruling found tribes are likely to succeed under federal Indian gaming law but returned the case for further injunction proceedings.
- Tribes say prediction market access on reservations bypasses their authority and threatens revenues supporting education, health care, and government services.
Tribal leaders at this week's Global Gaming Expo (G2E) said their opposition centers on protecting sovereignty and the gaming revenues that support their governments. Their efforts have brought together tribes, commercial gaming representatives, and labor leaders while pushing lawmakers to address an industry they say bypasses the rules tribal operators must follow.
For California Nations Indian Gaming Association Chairman James Siva, the arrival of prediction markets has reinforced the need to defend gaming rights tribes spent decades establishing. Siva said prediction markets have helped unify California tribes and Native American lands more broadly.
“The more we work together, the more we can accomplish,” Siva said at one of the tribal-focused panels discussing prediction markets.
Indian Gaming Association chairman David Z. Bean said tribes are pursuing litigation, legislation, and public advocacy together. He said visits to Washington have helped move congressional discussions beyond initial uncertainty about what prediction markets are and toward recognition of their implications for tribal sovereignty.
Federal lawmakers have considered legislation to ban prediction markets, though efforts have so far stalled in Congress. Prediction markets - and their federal regulator - generallty maintain they are a form of congressionally permitted investment trading, not gambling.
Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Chairman Rodney Butler described the stakes as jobs, regional economies, and tribal economies. Gaming revenues, he said, help feed communities and provide education and health care.
Butler also pointed to the contrast between Connecticut’s regulated sports betting arrangements and prediction market access. Tribal sportsbook competitors are geofenced from one another’s reservations, he said, while prediction market apps can be accessed within tribal jurisdictions.
For tribal leaders, that distinction makes the dispute a question of governmental authority as well as competition, Butler said.
Blue Lake ruling adds a tribal legal challenge
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ Sept. 16 opinion in Blue Lake Rancheria v. Kalshi gives that sovereignty argument a separate legal foundation under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA).
Blue Lake Rancheria and Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians challenged sports event contracts offered by Kalshi and distributed through Robinhood. The tribes argued the contracts function as sports bets and violate federal Indian gaming law when offered on their lands.
The appeals court found the tribes likely to succeed on their IGRA claims, reversing that portion of a lower court decision denying a preliminary injunction.
The panel concluded the tribes had demonstrated that the contracts constituted gambling, occur on Indian lands when customers enter into them from tribal territory, and violate the applicable tribal gaming framework because the tribes had not authorized them.
That finding addresses a central issue for online gambling: where the activity takes place. The court treated a customer’s participation from tribal land as sufficient to bring the transaction within IGRA, rejecting the premise that the challenged activity occurs entirely elsewhere.
The panel also rejected the argument that the federal Commodity Exchange Act passed by Congress displaces IGRA. Federal authority over derivatives trading, the court reasoned, does not resolve whether transactions offered to customers on tribal lands comply with separate federal Indian gaming requirements.
The ruling did not itself impose an injunction, instead remanding the IGRA claim to the district court to consider the remaining preliminary-injunction factors. It also upheld the rejection of the tribes’ advertising claim challenging Kalshi’s assertion that sports betting is legal in all 50 states on its platform.
At G2E, another panel railing against prediction markets; AGA president Bill Miller is joined onstage by representatives from Congress, Tribal Gaming and Unions, three groups the AGA has galvanized in what it describes as "an existential battle" for the future of regulated gaming
— Ryan Butler (@butlerbetstrade) September 29, 2026
Gaming attorney Joshua Kirschner, in an email to Covers last month, described the opinion as adding an independent tribal sovereignty argument to the claims facing sports prediction market operators.
“The ruling further entrenches the Ninth Circuit’s hostility to the business model used by Kalshi and others, weakens the en banc petition in Assad, and adds a wholly distinct legal theory (tribal gaming sovereignty) to the growing arsenal of claims against prediction market operators,” Kirschner said in a statement.
Kirschner said restrictions requiring platforms to geofence tribal lands could follow further district court proceedings. He described the broader trajectory as potentially leading to a Supreme Court resolution or prolonged differences in where and how prediction markets can operate.
Stakes extend to tribal governments
As court cases side with tribes over prediction markets, tribal leaders and some members of Congress are working to take further action.
At G2E, Nevada Rep. Steven Horsford said court victories should be reinforced through federal legislation. Discussing his Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act, he said congressional action requires lawmakers to understand the consequences for tribal sovereignty, communities, and workers.
For tribes, the larger ramifications reach beyond whether a sports contract can trade on a federally regulated exchange. The Blue Lake case tests whether that access can bypass a tribe’s authority over gaming within its territory, while the political campaign seeks to protect the revenues supporting tribal self-government.
Siva said participation by individual tribes working with prediction markets would not resolve the objections raised by other tribal nations or change his association’s approach - or those of a growing number of the more than 500 federally recognized tribes.
“A tribe participating in this illegal activity does not turn it legal overnight,” Siva said.
