Kalshi is launching prediction apps with Native American tribes. That’s dividing Indian country

Courtesy Wind Creek Hospitality

Eric Wright thinks Kalshi could change lives on his Indian reservation.

He’s the administrator for the Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, a small Native American tribe in such an isolated area of northern California that it doesn’t have potable drinking water. But Wright hopes revenue from the tribe’s new Kalshi-backed prediction app will fund much-needed water projects.

The Kletsel Dehe is one of four tribes that launched prediction apps with Kalshi on Wednesday, becoming the latest to break ranks from most of Indian country, where opposition runs high because the industry could threaten casinos that provide an economic lifeline to hundreds of tribes.

“We aren’t a big gaming tribe that has a ton of economic dollars lying around,” Wright told CNN. “At its core, this is about tribal sovereignty and economic self-determination. Other tribes are entitled to disagree with our decision, but they don’t have veto power over our economic future.”

The explosive growth of prediction markets this year is driving a wedge between Native American communities across the country.

The four tribes partnering with Kalshi in California and Oklahoma add to a small but growing list of tribes embracing prediction markets. But hundreds of other tribes claim companies like Kalshi and Polymarket are illegally encroaching on their coveted gaming rights, and they’re pushing in court to ban sports prediction markets, which make up over 80% of the business.

Rebecca George, who runs the Washington Indian Gaming Association, is part of the broad coalition of tribes trying to rein in the prediction market industry. She’s one of nearly 20 people from all sides of the debate who spoke with CNN for this story.

She said casinos helped transform the “third-world conditions” she saw growing up on the Suquamish tribe’s Port Madison Indian Reservation, not far from Seattle. But she’s wary about what might happen to that revenue stream as prediction markets continue to grow.

“In Indian country, we’re still fighting for basic infrastructure,” George said. “Kalshi’s co-owners just became billionaires. And we know this is coming off of the backs of the tribes. So, it’s hard not to take personally.”

CNN has a partnership with Kalshi and uses its data to cover major events, but CNN editorial employees aren’t permitted to use prediction platforms.

As federal funding shrank in the 1970s, some tribes turned to bingo to raise money, sparking a legal showdown with states that restricted gambling.

A landmark Supreme Court case later opened the door for tribal gaming to expand, and Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, creating a federal framework for tribes to open casinos on their lands.

Brittany Bendabout/AP

“It’s a bit ironic that the tribes are saying these new up-and-comers found a backdoor to gambling, when that’s basically how tribal gaming came about,” said Jonathan Cohen, an expert on US gambling history. “It only got legal approval after the fact, with bingo halls and card rooms in small casinos.”

Nearly 250 tribal governments now operate about 545 gaming facilities across 29 states, according to the federal agency that regulates the industry.

These casinos saw record profits in 2025, with gross revenues surpassing $46.2 billion. But there are some clear heavyweights in the sector – about 56% of that money came from the most powerful 9% of tribal facilities.

Tribal gaming was already economically rattled by the rapid expansion of sports-betting over the past decade. Leaders from a half-dozen tribal gaming associations told CNN they want to avoid further disruptions from prediction sites, where more than 80% of trading volume comes from sports.

Still, most of the fears from Indian country revolve around what might happen to those income streams as sports markets continue growing on prediction sites – as opposed to what’s already happening.

Tribal leaders who spoke to CNN didn’t provide data, when asked, showing revenue drops this year. But many believe there are only so many “gaming dollars” to go around, even though executives as sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel downplay concerns of cannibalization from prediction sites.

Glen Gobin remembers growing up in the 1950s, carrying buckets of water from a nearby pump to his grandparents’ house because they didn’t have indoor plumbing at the Tulalip Tribes reservation in Washington state.

He now sits on the tribal council and has seen the transformative impact of casino dollars, which funded 100% of a $67 million water pipeline and a $19 million early education center , according to records reviewed by CNN.

Mike Siegel/The Seattle Times/AP

“First it was about creating jobs,” Gobin said of the first wave of tribal gaming in the 1990s. “Then it was, we need to build homes, we need to build infrastructure, we need roads, we need water, we need sewer plants.”

He was part of a group of tribal leaders that met last month with federal regulators in Washington, DC, lobbying for a ban on sports markets.

Also in the room was Robbie McGhee, vice chair of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the only federally recognized tribe in Alabama. He said about 85% of his budget comes from gaming, and federal funds only cover 20% of a $20 million health care budget for members and children of tribal descent.

“We have always done our best to play by the rules… we had to work with our state to come to an agreement for what gaming would look like,” McGhee said, drawing a contrast with prediction companies that sought approval from the federal government instead of the states.

Courtesy Poarch Creek Indians

He added, “We have built an economy for our governments.”

McGhee also eagerly pointed out that non-tribal casinos pay hefty state taxes that fund education and health care. Federally regulated prediction sites don’t pay state gaming taxes, and those companies are thriving: Kalshi is reportedly eyeing a $40 billion valuation, and Polymarket is at $20 billion .

There are now dozens of cases involving tribes, non-Indian casinos and dozens of states – and most experts believe the Supreme Court will ultimately decide the legality of sports prediction markets.

Two California tribes won last month at a federal appeals court, which ruled that sports markets from Kalshi and Robinhood violate tribal gaming rights enshrined in federal law.

A Wisconsin federal judge, however, ruled in May that the Ho-Chunk Nation “produced little evidence” that its casinos were losing customers to Kalshi. The judge declined to shut down Kalshi within the tribe’s borders.

“It was reactionary at the start,” said James Meggesto, a seasoned tribal gaming attorney at Holland & Knight. “The gaming tribes were tuned in early on. But the last year has seen a real galvanization of the opposition, notwithstanding a handful of tribes that are dipping their toes into it.”

When Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour announced the first tribal prediction app last month with the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, he wrote that “the future doesn’t have to be organized around conflict.”

Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty Images

But the conflict heightened last week, with insults flying back and forth.

The New York Post recently reported about a failed attempt at collaboration in 2025 between Mansour and Victor Rocha, conference chair at the Indian Gaming Association. He’s a leading anti-prediction antagonist on social media who has boasted about “curb-stomping” Kalshi with “no mercy.”

Last month, Rocha derided a “coffee boy” that he said was sent by Kalshi to court potential new tribal partners at a professional conference in Las Vegas, and he encouraged tribes to sabotage the meetings. Kalshi’s top spokeswoman, Elisabeth Diana, then called Rocha a “scared bully.”

The tribes aligning with Kalshi don’t see it as a battle with opposing sides.

Gabby Jones/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Michael Stopp is a Cherokee businessman whose company worked on the prediction app launched Wednesday by the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town, in eastern Oklahoma. Prediction apps won’t “take from the pot” of tribal gaming, he said, because digital platforms can’t replace the experience of sitting at a slot machine or playing table games like blackjack.

“I didn’t want to just be the redface out there,” giving Kalshi a Native American partner they could “tokenize,” Stopp told CNN. “But we do our due diligence and really vet the companies we work with, and they’ve put together a very good program for these tribes. It is a legitimate opportunity.”

Marshall Pierite, chair of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe, said there was a “lukewarm” reception from Indian country when his first-ever tribal prediction market came out last month. But he said some tribal leaders privately asked him “how they can piggyback on our efforts” with Kalshi.

“We just love to challenge and change the status quo,” Pierite said.

With the Trump administration’s blessing , prediction markets are structured as financial exchanges for trading – not casinos or sportsbooks for gambling. This means they bypass state gaming regulations and instead get federally licensed to offer “event contracts” by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC.

CFTC chairman Mike Selig , a Trump appointee and staunch supporter of prediction markets, invited tribal leaders last month to his Washington, DC, offices for a meeting that attendees said was professional but unproductive.

Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

One attendee, James Siva, chair of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, said “decades of work” on tribal gaming were “circumvented by a one-man show” at the CFTC. (The CFTC is supposed to have a bipartisan five-member board, but Selig has been the sole commissioner all year.)

Siva said tribal advocates told Selig there are more than 6,000 tribal gaming regulators across the country. Compare that to the CFTC , which had only 535 employees as of the latest tally in February. The CFTC polices not just prediction sites but also commodity futures and other financial instruments.

A senior CFTC official told CNN that agency leaders saw the meeting as “productive” and appreciated the strong tribal attendance. The official said as a result of the meeting, the CFTC assigned a staff member to add tribal engagement to their portfolio.

When asked to comment on the critiques from the tribal attendees, CFTC spokeswoman Brooke Nethercott told CNN that “Chairman Selig was happy to engage with tribal leaders and looks forward to continued engagement.”

CNN’s Akansha Singh contributed to this story

承蒙 Wind Creek Hospitality 惠允

埃里克·赖特认为卡尔希可以改变他所在印第安保留地的人们的生活。

他是克莱特塞尔·德赫·温顿族（Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation）的行政长官，该族是加州北部一个偏远地区的小型美洲原住民部落，甚至没有饮用水。但赖特希望，该部落新推出的、由卡尔希（Kalshi）支持的预测应用程序的收入，能够为急需的水利项目提供资金。

克莱特塞尔·德赫部落是周三与卡尔希合作推出预测应用程序的四个部落之一，成为最新一个打破印第安人国家大多数部落阵营的部落。在印第安人国家，反对声浪很高，因为该行业可能会威胁到为数百个部落提供经济生命线的赌场。

“我们不是那种财大气粗的大型博彩部落，”赖特告诉CNN。“归根结底，这关乎部落主权和经济自主权。其他部落有权不同意我们的决定，但他们无权否决我们的经济未来。”

今年预测市场的爆炸式增长正在加剧美国各地原住民社区之间的分裂。

加利福尼亚州和俄克拉荷马州的四个部落与卡尔希公司合作，使得接受预测市场的部落数量虽少但不断增长。然而，其他数百个部落声称，像卡尔希和Polymarket这样的公司非法侵犯了他们梦寐以求的博彩权，他们正在通过法律途径推动取缔体育预测市场，因为这些市场占博彩业的80%以上。

华盛顿州印第安博彩协会负责人丽贝卡·乔治是众多部落组成的联盟成员之一，该联盟正试图规范预测市场行业。她是接受CNN采访的近20位来自各方人士之一，他们就此报道接受了采访。

她说，赌场帮助改变了她在苏夸米什部落位于西雅图附近的麦迪逊港印第安保留地长大时所看到的“第三世界般的状况”。但她担心，随着预测市场的持续增长，这种收入来源可能会受到影响。

“在印第安人保留地，我们还在为基本基础设施而奋斗，”乔治说。“卡尔希的共同所有者刚刚成了亿万富翁。我们知道这一切都是建立在部落的血汗之上的。所以，很难不把这当成针对我们个人的攻击。”

CNN 与 Kalshi 建立了合作关系，并使用其数据报道重大事件，但 CNN 编辑人员不允许使用预测平台。

20 世纪 70 年代，随着联邦资金的减少，一些部落开始通过玩宾果游戏来筹集资金，这引发了与限制赌博的各州之间的法律对峙。

最高法院的一项里程碑式案件后来为部落博彩业的扩张打开了大门，国会于 1988 年通过了《印第安博彩监管法》，为部落在其土地上开设赌场创建了联邦框架。

布列塔尼·本达布特/美联社

“部落方面说这些新兴的赌博者找到了进入赌博行业的后门，这有点讽刺意味，因为部落赌博基本上就是这样产生的，”美国赌博史专家乔纳森·科恩说。“它只是在事后才获得合法认可，最初是在小型赌场里开设宾果游戏厅和牌室。”

据监管该行业的联邦机构称，目前近 250 个部落政府在 29 个州经营着约 545 个博彩场所。

这些赌场在2025年获得了创纪录的利润，总收入超过462亿美元。但该行业中存在一些明显的巨头——其中约56%的资金来自实力最强的9%的部落赌场。

过去十年，体育博彩的迅速扩张已经对部落博彩业造成了经济冲击。六个部落博彩协会的领导人告诉CNN，他们希望避免预测网站带来进一步的干扰，因为这些网站超过80%的交易量都来自体育博彩。

不过，印度乡村地区的大多数人的担忧都集中在，随着体育市场在预测网站上的持续增长，这些收入来源可能会发生什么变化——而不是已经发生的事情。

接受 CNN 采访的部落首领们在被问及今年的收入下降情况时，并未提供相关数据。但许多人认为，博彩业的资金毕竟有限，尽管 DraftKings 和 FanDuel 等体育博彩公司的管理人员淡化了预测网站蚕食博彩业务的担忧。

格伦·戈宾回忆起 20 世纪 50 年代的童年时光，当时他住在华盛顿州的图拉利普部落保留地，因为那里没有室内管道，所以他经常要从附近的水泵提水到祖父母家。

他现在是部落委员会的成员，亲眼目睹了赌场资金带来的变革性影响。据 CNN 查阅的记录显示，赌场资金为一条价值 6700 万美元的输水管道和一座价值 1900 万美元的早期教育中心提供了 100% 的资金。

迈克·西格尔/《西雅图时报》/美联社

戈宾谈到上世纪90年代第一波部落博彩浪潮时说：“最初是为了创造就业机会。后来，人们意识到我们需要建造房屋、建设基础设施、修建道路、供水和污水处理厂。”

上个月，他与其他一些部落领导人一起在华盛顿特区与联邦监管机构会面，游说禁止体育市场。

房间里还有罗比·麦吉，他是波奇克里克印第安部落的副主席，该部落是阿拉巴马州唯一获得联邦认可的部落。他说，部落预算的约85%来自博彩业，而联邦资金仅能覆盖部落成员及其子女2000万美元医疗保健预算的20%。

“我们一直尽力遵守规则……我们必须与州政府合作，就博彩业的发展方向达成一致，”麦吉说道，这与那些寻求联邦政府而非州政府批准的预测公司形成了鲜明对比。

承蒙波奇溪印第安人惠允

他补充说：“我们已经为政府建立了一个经济体系。”

麦吉还急切地指出，非部落赌场缴纳巨额州税，这些税款用于资助教育和医疗保健。而受联邦监管的预测网站无需缴纳州博彩税，这些公司却蓬勃发展：据报道，Kalshi 的估值目标为 400 亿美元，Polymarket 的估值也达到了 200 亿美元。

目前已有数十起案件涉及部落、非印第安赌场和数十个州——大多数专家认为，最高法院最终将决定体育预测市场的合法性。

上个月，加州两个部落在联邦上诉法院胜诉，该法院裁定 Kalshi 和 Robinhood 的体育博彩市场违反了联邦法律规定的部落博彩权。

然而，威斯康星州的一位联邦法官在五月份裁定，霍-丘克部落“几乎没有提供任何证据”证明其赌场正在流失顾客给卡尔希赌场。该法官拒绝关闭位于部落境内的卡尔希赌场。

“一开始是出于被动反应，”霍兰德·奈特律师事务所经验丰富的部落博彩律师詹姆斯·梅格斯托说。“博彩部落很早就有所关注。但过去一年，反对的声音真正高涨起来，尽管也有少数部落在试探。”

上个月，Kalshi 联合创始人 Tarek Mansour 与路易斯安那州的 Tunica-Biloxi 部落合作推出了第一个部落预测应用程序。他写道：“未来不必围绕冲突而组织。”

Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty Images

但上周冲突升级，双方互相辱骂。

《纽约邮报》最近报道了曼苏尔与印度博彩协会会议主席维克多·罗查在2025年合作的失败尝试。罗查是社交媒体上反对预测的领军人物，他曾吹嘘自己“毫不留情地”击败了卡尔希。

上个月，罗查嘲讽了一名他声称是卡尔希派来在拉斯维加斯举行的专业会议上拉拢潜在新部落伙伴的“跑腿小弟”，并怂恿各部落破坏这些会议。卡尔希的首席发言人伊丽莎白·戴安娜随后称罗查是“胆小的恶霸”。

与卡尔希结盟的部落并不认为这是一场与对立阵营的战斗。

Gabby Jones/Bloomberg/Getty Images

迈克尔·斯托普是一位切罗基族商人，他的公司参与开发了一款预测应用程序，该程序于周三由俄克拉荷马州东部的阿拉巴马-夸萨特部落镇推出。他表示，预测应用程序不会“蚕食”部落博彩的利润，因为数字平台无法取代坐在老虎机前或玩二十一点等桌面游戏的体验。

“我不想成为众矢之的，”斯托普告诉CNN，“我不想让卡尔希公司仅仅因为有印第安人合作伙伴就被他们‘物化’。但我们确实做了尽职调查，认真审查了与我们合作的公司，而他们为这些部落制定了一个非常好的项目。这是一个正当的机会。”

图尼卡-比洛克西部落主席马歇尔·皮埃里特表示，他上个月推出的首个部落预测市场在印第安人社区反响“冷淡”。但他表示，一些部落首领私下询问他，如何才能借助卡尔希平台“来推动我们的发展”。

“我们就是喜欢挑战和改变现状，”皮埃里特说。

在特朗普政府的默许下，预测市场被构建成用于交易的金融交易所，而非用于赌博的赌场或体育博彩场所。这意味着它们绕过了各州的博彩监管，转而获得美国商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）的联邦许可，提供“赛事合约”。

美国商品期货交易委员会主席迈克·塞利格是特朗普任命的官员，也是预测市场的坚定支持者。上个月，他邀请部落领导人到他在华盛顿特区的办公室举行会议，与会者表示会议虽然专业，但毫无成效。

Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

一位与会者，加州印第安部落博彩协会主席詹姆斯·西瓦表示，部落博彩业“数十年的努力”被商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）的“一人独裁”所“绕过”。（CFTC本应由一个两党五人组成的委员会负责，但塞利格全年都是唯一的委员。）

西瓦表示，部落权益倡导者告诉塞利格，全美有超过6000名部落博彩监管机构人员。相比之下，美国商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）截至2月份的最新统计，仅有535名员工。CFTC不仅监管预测网站，还监管商品期货和其他金融工具。

美国商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）一位高级官员告诉CNN，该机构领导认为此次会议“富有成效”，并对部落代表的积极参与表示赞赏。这位官员表示，会议结束后，CFTC已指派一名工作人员负责将部落事务纳入其工作职责范围。

当被问及对部落与会者的批评有何评论时，美国商品期货交易委员会 (CFTC) 发言人布鲁克·内瑟科特 (Brooke Nethercott) 告诉 CNN，“塞利格主席很高兴与部落领导人进行交流，并期待继续交流。”

CNN的阿坎莎·辛格对本文亦有贡献。