Tribal gaming leaders are pressing Congress to keep sports wagering under tribal and state control as prediction markets move deeper into the field. At a House Agriculture Committee subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, David Z. Bean, chairman of the Indian Gaming Association, argued that CFTC-regulated event contracts are being used to offer sports bets outside the legal systems tribes and states already operate.
Bean appeared before the Subcommittee on Commodity Markets at a hearing titled “Examining Customer Protections and Market Integrity in Sports Event Prediction Markets.” He said the Indian Gaming Association was founded in 1985 as a national association of federally recognized tribes, with a mission of protecting tribal sovereignty and supporting economic self-sufficiency through gaming and other development.
His central argument was that the issue before Congress was bigger than sports betting. He said it was about tribal sovereignty, the integrity of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, rural economies and consumer protection, especially for young people, and he said Congress never authorized the expansion he was describing.
Bean cast Indian gaming as the economic base that allows tribal governments to pay for healthcare, education, housing, public safety, infrastructure and economic development. He said every dollar generated through Indian gaming is reinvested in tribal communities, and that more than 240 tribal governments rely on that revenue while the industry supports more than 682,000 jobs, mostly in rural communities.
He also said tribes spend more than $450 million a year regulating their operations and employ more than 6,000 regulators to oversee licensing, fraud prevention, responsible gaming, age verification and compliance.
The Congressional Research Service says Congress enacted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988 to provide a statutory basis for tribal gaming. It says that as of September 2024, 243 tribes owned, operated or licensed 532 gaming establishments in 29 states, producing $43.9 billion in gaming revenue.
Bean said sports betting is Class III gaming under IGRA and requires a tribal-state compact before a tribal government may conduct it. He argued that prediction markets are bypassing that framework and allowing sports-related wagers even in places where online sports betting remains illegal.
He said the platforms avoid consumer protections, responsible-gaming rules and age checks built by tribes and states. Those systems, he said, typically include minimum-age limits, problem-gambling programs, self-exclusion, deposit limits, session-time limits and bans on betting on local teams, high school sports, college sports and player proposition bets.
Bean also said prediction markets target customers under 21 and people in jurisdictions that prohibit online sports gambling, advertising on Instagram, TikTok and X and hiring entertainers and social media influencers.
He blamed CFTC inaction in 2025 for the spread of prediction-market platforms and said the commission has since become an active proponent under Chairman Michael Selig. Bean said the agency filed lawsuits against nine states and proposed a rule that would replace existing bans on gambling on sports outcomes with one that would foster nationwide online sports gambling and even casino-style gambling.
He told lawmakers that a licensed designated contract market was ordered just last week to defy a state court order to stop activity within a state’s borders. He also said prediction markets have not created a new financial product, but are offering the same sports wagers found in traditional sportsbooks while avoiding the oversight, responsibility and local accountability that tribes and states require.
Bean put reported prediction-market volume at about $60 billion in 2025 and said it could easily top $325 billion in 2026. Citing the American Gaming Association, he said the products had already taken more than $1.2 billion from state governments over 18 months, while tribal governments were reporting losses of 5 to 10%.
He said the pressure campaign has been building for nearly 18 months, with an Indian Gaming Association resolution in March 2025, a similar National Congress of American Indians resolution in June, and congressional briefings in June and December 2025 and again in February and May 2026. Bean urged lawmakers to advance H.R. 7840, the Event Contract Enforcement Act, which he said would codify the CFTC’s existing regulations and reaffirm tribal and state authority over online sports betting.
