Техасын Сенатын хороо бооцооны платформуудын үйл ажиллагааг хэрхэн зохицуулах талаар хэлэлцүүлэг өрнүүлсэн нь Valorant Champions болон League of Legends Worlds зэрэг цахим спортын арга хэмжээнд ч нөлөөлөхүйц үр дагавартай байна.
“Kalshi” зэрэг урьдчилсан таамаглалын платформууд нь спортын бооцоо биш харин “арилжаа” гэх тодотголоор үйл ажиллагаагаа явуулдаг. Гэвч Америкийн Тоглоомын Холбоо (AGA) эдгээр платформыг хууль бус бооцооны үйл ажиллагаа гэж үзэн, Техас мужид үйл ажиллагааг нь хязгаарлахыг шаардаж байна. Техас болон Калифорни муж улс нь спортын арга хэмжээний гэрээт арилжааны 43 хувийг бүрдүүлдэг тул энэхүү маргаан нь тус салбарын ирээдүйд томоохон байр суурь эзэлж байна.
Сенатор Брайан Хьюзийн удирдсан 62 минутын хэлэлцүүлгийн үеэр Kalshi-ийн хуулийн зөвлөх Роберт ДеНаулт холбооны түвшинд зохицуулагддаг платформ нь хэрэглэгчдийг хяналтгүй гадаадын бооцооны сайтуудаас хамгаалдаг гэж хамгаалсан. Харин AGA-ийн төлөөлөгч Трес Йорк эдгээр платформыг уламжлалт бооцооны газруудтай ижил гэж үзэж, муж улсын хууль тогтоомжийн дагуу хатуу хяналт тавих шаардлагатайг онцоллоо. Мөн насанд хүрээгүй хүмүүс хөрөнгө оруулалтын дансаар дамжуулан бооцоо тавих эрсдэлтэй нөхцөл байдлыг шинжээчид анхааруулсан юм.
Энэхүү маргаан нь зөвхөн Техасаар хязгаарлагдахгүй бөгөөд АНУ-ын давж заалдах шатны шүүх Kalshi-ийн гэрээт бооцоонуудыг овгийн нутаг дэвсгэр дээр зөвшөөрөлгүй тоглоом гэж үзсэн шийдвэр гаргаад байна. Одоогоор Illinois болон Kentucky мужуудад ч мөн төстэй хуулийн маргаанууд үргэлжилж байгаа нь цахим спортын бооцооны зах зээлд томоохон өөрчлөлтүүд гарахыг харуулж байна. 2027 онд Техас муж улс энэ асуудлаар эцсийн шийдвэрээ гаргах төлөвтэй байгаа нь салбарын цаашдын чиг хандлагыг тодорхойлох гол түлхүүр болох юм.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
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If you have ever fired a wager into a Kalshi market, you already know the pitch: it’s not gambling, it’s trading. That distinction just went to court in the Texas Senate, and the outcome could eventually decide how every event contract on the platform gets treated, including the ones tracking Valorant Champions or League of Legends Worlds.
Kalshi doesn’t just move volume on the Dallas Cowboys or Ohio State football. The same exchange lists contracts across esports tournaments, which means any ruling that reclassifies its NFL or college markets as illegal gambling in a state like Texas has obvious implications for the infrastructure esports bettors already use elsewhere. That’s exactly why a 62-minute hearing in Austin, convened by Senator Bryan Hughes in the Senate Committee on State Affairs, matters well beyond Texas politics.
The Blueprint For 2027
American Gaming Association Vice President Tres York and Kalshi head of enforcement and legal counsel Robert DeNault sat at the same table, and they did not agree on much. York pushed lawmakers toward a state-court order forcing prediction markets to geofence themselves out of Texas entirely, while DeNault warned that banning a federally regulated product would simply push customers toward offshore books with none of the guardrails.
Nothing was resolved on the spot, but that was never really the point. According to the iGaming Business account of the hearing, this session functions as the blueprint Texas will work from when it formally evaluates prediction markets next year.
Texas Trades Big, Bets Nothing (Officially)
The numbers explain why lawmakers bothered showing up. Trading on last Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants matchup topped $208 million across US prediction markets, according to Aldrin Research, with Kalshi’s version of that Sunday Night Football clash outdrawing any regular-season NFL game from a year ago.
College football hit even harder. When Ohio State faced Texas on 12 September, more than 50.7 million contracts changed hands, per Odds Shopper. Research from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming found that Texas and California together account for 43% of all sports-event-contract activity nationally, though no Texas-only breakout is publicly available.
Sports wagering is flatly illegal in Texas. All that volume is happening in a state where a traditional sportsbook couldn’t legally take the same bet, which is precisely the tension the AGA wants lawmakers to notice. It’s also why the November races for governor, attorney general and US Senate carry outsized weight for the sector heading into 2027.
Sportsbook or Exchange?
York’s core argument is simple: a contract on the Cowboys beating the Giants isn’t meaningfully different from the same wager placed at a sportsbook window. Costume changes, he suggested, don’t change what’s underneath, echoing a line from state Senator Bob Hall, who compared gambling’s various forms to different outfits at the same ball.
DeNault’s counter leaned on the safety argument rather than the semantics one, framing federally regulated prediction markets as the safer alternative to offshore books that skip consumer protections entirely. That framing gets murkier once you factor in testimony from problem-gambling expert Brianne Doura-Schawohl, who flagged a Kalshi competitor’s feature letting minors over 17 link an investment account to buy and sell event contracts. She called the setup very dangerous for teenagers already prone to risk-taking.
For more on the AGA’s broader case against prediction markets siphoning state gambling revenue, the association’s earlier billions-lost argument lays out the numbers behind its Texas testimony.
Tribal Lands and the Bigger Fight
Texas isn’t the only battlefield. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower-court ruling in Blue Lake Rancheria v. Kalshi this week, determining that Kalshi’s sports event contracts amount to unauthorised gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act when accessed on tribal land – a very different legal question from the state-versus-federal fight playing out in Austin, but one that adds to the pile of jurisdictions weighing in on where these products belong.
Kalshi is also moving in the opposite direction elsewhere, striking a partnership with the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana to power a new tribal-owned trading app through SaltTrade Derivatives. Tribal Chairman Marshall Pierite called it exactly the type of opportunity Indian Country should be pursuing, where tribes act as owners rather than participants. Meanwhile, Indian Gaming Association leaders met with CFTC Chair Michael Selig the same week, with IGA Chair David Bean describing the talks as mostly unproductive.
These fragmented, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction skirmishes are becoming the norm. For a wider look at Kalshi’s parallel legal fronts, its lawsuit against Illinois and the CFTC’s action against Kentucky show the same pattern of states and regulators pulling in opposite directions.
Verdict: Nobody Won, But the Stakes Just Got Clearer
The Austin hearing didn’t ban anything, and it didn’t clear anything either. What it did was lay out Texas’s two realistic paths: York’s route of state-court litigation and statewide geofencing, or DeNault’s warning that squeezing out a regulated platform just hands the business to offshore operators with none of the same oversight.
Whichever way Texas leans in 2027, it’s shaping up alongside a governor’s race, an attorney general’s race and a US Senate contest that could all shift who’s actually enforcing the answer. For readers tracking how this fight might eventually reach the esports contracts sitting on the same platforms, the broader clash between prediction markets and state legislatures is only getting started.
