Chris Christie Joins American Gaming Association to Fight Prediction Markets
Posted on: December 23, 2025, 12:18h.
Last updated on: December 22, 2025, 05:21h.
- Chris Christie has joined the fight against sports prediction markets
- Christie helped states win the right to legalize sports betting
- Christie and President Trump are not friends, which could hamper Christie’s CFTC influence
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who championed the fight against the US federal government for states to possess the right to legalize sports betting, has a new target in sports prediction markets.
Christie, a two-term Republican governor in the blue Garden State, helped lead New Jersey’s legal challenge to the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). The federal law had restricted single-game sports gambling to Nevada.
After years in court, the US Supreme Court in May 2018 ultimately sided with New Jersey in that PASPA violated anti-commandeering interpretations of the Tenth Amendment. The landmark ruling led to 40 states and Washington, DC, passing sports betting laws.
Now, Christie is joining the American Gaming Association (AGA), a trade group representing the interests of the commercial and tribal gaming industries, to campaign against the continued rise of sports prediction markets.
CNBC’s Contessa Brewer, who covers gaming matters for the business news outlet, broke the Christie news last Friday.
Sports Prediction Markets
Prediction markets licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) claim to facilitate the buying and selling of binary markets and yes/no contracts. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket initially focused on the outcome of real-world happenings and events, from the weather to politics, but more recently ventured into sports.
State attorneys general, gaming regulators, and certain state lawmakers have said the sports prediction markets are nothing more than sports gambling, but Kalshi and the like do not hold sports betting licenses in states where they operate. They’re even operating in states like California and Texas, where sports betting is illegal.
Several traditional sportsbook giants, including DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics, recently withdrew their AGA memberships to pursue their own prediction markets. DraftKings Predictions and FanDuel Predicts launched over the past week.
The AGA is betting on Christie being able to change the narrative.
They are clearly illegal in the sports gaming space,” Christie told Brewer. “The Supreme Court turned this [sports betting] over to the states. Regulation is very important,” Christie said. “This is not compliant with the law.”
The CFTC, which administers the Commodity Exchange Act, has allowed its Designated Contract Market (DCM) licensees to offer contracts on sporting outcomes. The CFTC, under the Trump administration, seems unlikely to force prediction markets to cease trading sports contracts. Even the president’s family is prepping a prediction market entry through its media group, and Donald Trump Jr. is a special advisor to Polymarket and Kalshi.
The Commodity Exchange Act prohibits CFTC licensees from trading contracts involving “gaming” and events “contrary to the public interest” like war, terrorism, and assassination.
“Just because people brazenly break the law doesn’t mean they should be permitted to do so,” Christie said.
Sports Integrity in Focus
Christie says, unlike legal, regulated sportsbooks, which report suspicious betting activity to state gaming regulators and sports leagues when wagering patterns suggest a game or player could be compromised, predictive markets are like the wild west, where no such monitoring is occurring.
The things that have happened in the NBA and MLB were discovered because the licensed sportsbooks are partnered with state regulators to look for irregularities. No one is looking for irregularities in sports prediction markets,” Christie said.
“The CFTC has made it clear they aren’t regulating it with any rigor,” Christie continued. “The CFTC is not doing the job regarding sports, nor do they claim to be doing the job.”
Christie will try and help the AGA stress to the CFTC that prediction markets should not be allowed to offer sports contracts. It could be a tall task, as Christie’s relationship with Trump has soured greatly since his 2016 endorsement of the billionaire, something he’s called the “biggest mistake I’ve made in my political career.”
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