Washington state’s balanced and well-regulated system of sports betting, which limits the placement of sports bets to the brick-and-mortar premises of tribal casinos, is under direct and sustained threat. If the massive proliferation of online sites like Kalshi, Polymarket, and others that intentionally misuse the federal commodities regulations to bypass carefully considered gaming laws is allowed to continue, the impacts will be devastating not just for tribal gaming but for society at large.
If you’ve been online recently, you’ve likely come across ads for one of these sites. They often use flashy ads to promise easy and immediate access to in-game betting on sporting events via smartphones, targeting their audience of mostly young men. These companies offer wagers on sports outcomes by labeling them as “event contracts” and introducing them through the Commodities Futures Trading Commission self-certification process.
Although labeled as financial products, these offerings are really just what they appear to be: bets on sports outcomes. They are overtly marketed as such, even as they operate entirely outside state and tribal regulatory frameworks. Their ubiquitous ads dangle the lure of potential quick winnings to draw users into a destructive cycle of compulsive betting with no safeguards. No mention is made of the risks associated with these bets, or even of the need to engage in betting activity responsibly. Instead, the glossy promise of easy money is hammered over and over, in ad after ad.
It’s a breathtaking and shameless end to our gaming laws, laws that exist to protect the public from the obvious social harms of a reckless expansion of gambling and unfettered access to quick-thrill betting. The claim these sites make, that their offerings “are legal in all 50 states,” makes a mockery of our laws and regulations. If left unchallenged, regulatory inertia will morph into de facto approval, effectively eliminating all state and tribal authority over gaming, while putting the public at risk.
That is why WIGA and other tribal gaming organizations are mobilizing to push for regulatory and legal action and to raise public awareness of the dangers and risks of social harm these sites are creating. Several district courts around the country are currently considering legal challenges, and dozens of tribes and tribal organizations, including WIGA, have been submitting amicus briefs in these cases, urging the courts to put a stop to this egregious end run around regulated gaming.
We are also joining the call for Congress to act to provide oversight of federal agencies and to ensure that sports-based financial events contracts must be understood as contrary to the public interest and not allowed. Working in tandem with other tribes and with state gaming regulators and concerned elected officials, we also seek action from state attorney’s generals to move quickly to enforce the existing gambling and consumer protection laws that these sites are so blatantly violating.
WIGA believes in carefully limited and carefully regulated gaming that allows adults to engage responsibly in gaming activities, including sports betting, while minimizing the negative societal and personal impacts that excessive gambling can create. Tribal governments in Washington are proud of our more than three-decade track record of working in partnership with state and federal authorities to build a safe and productive system of tribal gaming that has done so much to lift tribal communities out of poverty while restoring self-reliance.
We cannot, and will not, stand idly by as all of that is blown up by irresponsible actors who are subverting state and federal gaming laws to line their own pockets at the expense of the public good.
