- The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana became what Kalshi calls the first tribal nation in prediction markets through a partnership announced Sept. 18.
- SaltTrade Derivatives will run on conditional no-action relief from CFTC staff rather than the compact covering the tribe’s own casino.
- The California Nations Indian Gaming Association rejected a similar CFTC pathway for tribes one day earlier as a divide-and-conquer tactic.
- Louisiana’s gaming board has told its own licensees that offering prediction-market contracts threatens their state sports betting license.
MARKSVILLE, La. – The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana partnered with prediction-market operator Kalshi on Sept. 18 to create SaltTrade Derivatives, a tribal-owned venture whose trading app will run on federal commodities law rather than the Louisiana gaming compact that covers the tribe’s own casino.
The SaltTrade Structure
SaltTrade Derivatives, described in the tribe’s own announcement as “a newly established subdivision of a Tribal-owned enterprise,” will put its own event-contract trading app in front of customers, with Kalshi powering the machinery underneath through what the announcement called its “established infrastructure and market expertise.”
SaltTrade will not itself register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), operating instead on what the announcement described as “conditional no-action relief issued by the staff of the CFTC.” No launch date has been set; Kalshi said only that platform and launch details will follow “in the coming months.”
That federal track sits apart from how the tribe already runs its own casino floor. Paragon Casino Resort, the tribe’s Marksville property, operates under a Class III gaming compact with Louisiana that the Interior Department approved in 2019, the framework under which tribal casino gaming is negotiated with the state and regulated under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. SaltTrade instead answers to the CFTC alone.
Tunica-Biloxi Chairman Marshall Pierite framed the venture as the kind of deal tribes should be pursuing, one “where Tribes are owners, innovators and leaders, not just participants.” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said “Indian Country should have more paths to economic self-determination, not fewer” as the tribe becomes “the first tribal nation to enter prediction markets.”
A Rejection One Day Earlier
The Tunica-Biloxi deal followed, by one day, a starkly different answer from another corner of Indian Country to the same question of how tribes should engage the CFTC on prediction markets. On Sept. 17, California Nations Indian Gaming Association Chairman James Siva issued a statement rejecting what he described as a CFTC offer of a “pathway into prediction markets” for tribes, calling it “nothing more than a divide-and-conquer strategy to try and weaken the legitimate concerns we have raised about this illegal gambling operation.”
“Sports-event contracts remain illegal gambling, regardless of who offers them,” Siva said in the CNIGA statement. “Calling them financial products does not change their underlying nature or exempt them from longstanding federal, state, and Tribal laws governing lawful gaming.”
CNIGA’s statement did not name the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe or SaltTrade, and it is not clear whether the arrangement Siva was responding to is the same no-action framework SaltTrade is using. The two developments nonetheless landed one day apart: one tribal organization publicly refusing any CFTC-offered route into the market, another tribe signing onto one.
An Advisory That Doesn’t Reach Tribal Land
Louisiana’s own gaming regulator has already told the operators it licenses to stay away from this exact product. A Dec. 5, 2025 advisory from the Louisiana Gaming Control Board told licensees and permittees that “no person or entity may offer, accept, facilitate, or in any way enable sports wagering in Louisiana unless the activity is conducted by a licensed or permitted operator.”
The advisory added that any event-style “contract,” “swap” or “market” tied to a sporting outcome outside that system “constitutes illegal gambling.” The board wrote that it does “not consider Sports and Other Event Contracts as commodities transactions regulated by the CFTC,” regardless of how a platform labels the product.
That warning, addressed to the board’s own regulated parties, does not reach a sovereign tribe operating under its own gaming commission and federal compact rather than a Louisiana license or permit, the gap SaltTrade’s structure is built around. That stance has otherwise made Louisiana prediction markets one of Kalshi’s tougher operating environments.
Kalshi has not said when SaltTrade will begin taking trades, another entrant for USA gambling sites readers to track in a prediction-market field that has expanded state by state through 2026.