- G2E’s main stage gains a late-added session, “A United Front: Confronting Prediction Markets Together,” at 1 p.m. Sept. 29.
- AGA President Bill Miller will moderate a panel including a labor union president, a tribal chairman and a Nevada congressman.
- Federal appeals courts split this year, with the 3rd Circuit backing Kalshi in New Jersey and the 9th Circuit backing Nevada regulators.
- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois on April 2 to block their enforcement against prediction-market platforms.
LAS VEGAS – A late main-stage addition to the Global Gaming Expo, “A United Front: Confronting Prediction Markets Together,” will put gaming, labor and congressional leaders on one panel Sept. 29 against platforms the American Gaming Association says have cost states more than $1.3 billion in potential gaming tax revenue since 2025.
A Late Addition To The Main Stage
The show opens Sept. 28 and closes Oct. 1 at the Venetian Expo. The AGA presents it and RX runs it. When G2E published its main-stage lineup Sept. 9, no prediction-markets session was on it. The session description promises a look at the platforms’ impact on “the state- and tribal-regulated gaming industry,” plus the legal and policy strategies for a coordinated answer.
Miller, the AGA’s president and CEO, moderates. Joining him are three leaders from outside the trade group: Gwen Mills, who heads the hospitality union UNITE HERE; Rodney Butler, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s chairman; and U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat.
“Collaboration both across and beyond the industry is critically important in preserving and protecting the state- and tribal-regulated gaming market, its employees, consumers, and the communities we serve,” Miller said in the session announcement.
A Split Verdict From Two Federal Circuits
The panel convenes with the central legal question still unresolved: whether a platform like Kalshi can sidestep state wagering statutes because its sports contracts trade on an exchange the Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversees.
In KalshiEX LLC v. Flaherty, decided April 6, a 2-1 majority of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Kalshi likely to win its argument that the Commodity Exchange Act overrides New Jersey’s wagering statutes as to the company’s sports contracts, and the majority kept a preliminary injunction against the state in force. The ruling extended a legal fight already shaping New Jersey prediction markets.
Five months later, on Aug. 28, three 9th Circuit judges went the other way in KalshiEX LLC v. Assad. Kalshi, they found without dissent, had not made the case that federal law likely displaces Nevada’s gaming rules. The injunction the company once held against the Nevada Gaming Control Board stays dissolved, and one piece of the dispute returns to the district judge.
The board’s March 2025 cease-and-desist letter had demanded that Kalshi stop offering its sports and election contracts, the opening move in the dispute over Nevada prediction markets.
New Jersey asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 2 to resolve the conflict, filing a petition for a writ of certiorari that asks the justices to review the Flaherty ruling. The petition, docketed as No. 26-299, argues that the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction over swaps does not displace the states’ police power to regulate gambling. Kalshi spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement the same day that the company is an open, nationwide exchange and “cannot be regulated by 50 different regulators.”
The CFTC stands with the platforms. On April 2 the agency sued Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois, telling the courts that when a state moves against a registered exchange’s event contracts it intrudes on authority Congress gave the CFTC alone. The Illinois Gaming Board sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter in April 2025, and Connecticut, whose consumer protection department issued its own order in December 2025, sued the company in August to block its sports contracts.
What The Fight Means For Bettors
Because the regulatory question remains open, whether a given platform can legally take a sports-related bet depends for now on which circuit’s ruling governs a bettor’s state, rather than on one national standard. The AGA said in a Sept. 4 release that the platforms operate outside the regulatory frameworks governing sports betting in the states that have legalized it.
The same release estimated that $5.1 billion of Kalshi’s sports volume came from users age 18 to 20, an age group below the legal betting age in 35 of the 40 jurisdictions where sports betting is legal, according to the AGA. The association projected legal wagering on the 2026 NFL season at $29.5 billion, flat against $29.4 billion a year earlier, and put the potential state gaming tax revenue lost to the platforms since 2025 at more than $1.3 billion.
Consumers weighing licensed USA gambling sites against unregulated alternatives are left to sort out which platforms even answer to a state regulator.
Tribal nations carry a separate stake: casino gaming on tribal land operates under compacts negotiated with individual states, and a separate 9th Circuit panel held Sept. 16 that a Kalshi sports contract bought by a customer on tribal land is Class III gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. UNITE HERE, the union Mills leads, represents casino and hospitality workers. Butler’s seat on the panel puts a tribal leader alongside the AGA and organized labor at G2E’s main stage.
Kalshi’s response to New Jersey’s petition is due at the Supreme Court on Nov. 9, according to the court’s docket, leaving the circuit split unresolved when G2E’s session convenes Sept. 29.