Major League Baseball (MLB) is joining the discussion surrounding events contracts and prediction markets with a letter addressed to acting Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chair Caroline Pham. In the letter, penned by Bryan Seeley, Executive Vice President, Legal & Operations, the MLB stresses what it sees as a dire need for events contracts operators to be regulated like sports betting operators.
Steele joined a chorus of gaming industry players and peripherals who are concerned about events contracts operators offering what is essentially standard sports betting without the benefit of integrity monitoring services. The sports event contracts that exchanges have recently offered resemble sports betting. The limited MLB event contracts available today do not carry the same integrity risks as prop bets or even single-game bets, but we expect that equivalent offerings will arrive soon. As the
resemblance between sports event contracts and traditional sports betting markets continues to grow, so too does the need to replicate the integrity and consumer protections that exist at the state level. Currently, those protections are lacking,” Steele pointed out in the letter.
The MLB, Steele noted, is not anti-gambling but supports regulation. MLB has supported legal sports betting at the state level based on robust regulation and relationships in which sports leagues are viewed as partners and integrity of competition is
considered paramount. If the CFTC decides to permit sports event contracts, this same integrity framework should be applied, he added.
That chorus of voices calling for regulatory help from the CFTC will be challenged by the fact that the incoming Chair of the CFTC is Brian D. Quintenz. Though Quintenz held the position from 2016 to 2021, he also a board member at Kalshi, the nation’s largest prediction market operator.