California tribal gaming group assails Tunica-Biloxi’s SaltTrade launch

The California Nations Indian Gaming Association has condemned the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe’s launch of SaltTrade Derivatives, a prediction-market app that uses Kalshi’s exchange infrastructure, calling the decision “profoundly disappointing” and arguing that a commercial agreement cannot make illegal gaming lawful.

In a Sept. 22 statement, CNIGA said the Louisiana tribe had sided with Kalshi less than 48 hours after a Ninth Circuit ruling on sports-event contracts. The association, which represents 58 federally recognized tribal governments, said the venture helped legitimize a model that tribal nations and states across the country were seeking to stop.

CNIGA argued that it was irrelevant who offered a sports-betting contract. Offering one on state or tribal land over the objection of the relevant government, it said, violated sovereignty. “A sports bet is still a sports bet. Class III gaming is still Class III gaming. And a business deal does not change the law,” the association said.

The criticism followed the Ninth Circuit’s Sept. 16 ruling in a case brought by Blue Lake Rancheria and Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians. The court found the tribes were likely to succeed in their claim that Kalshi’s sports-event contracts, when entered into from tribal territory, constituted Class III gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

The panel held that the contracts were located on Indian lands because users entered them from tribal territory. It also found that they were not authorized by the tribes’ gaming ordinances, violating tribal secretarial procedures and, consequently, the tribes’ compact with California. The court said the Commodity Exchange Act’s exclusive-jurisdiction provision did not extend to those sports-event contracts, and that IGRA was not displaced by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

As we reported last week, the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe launched SaltTrade on Sept. 18 as the first tribal nation prediction-market app. SaltTrade is a tribal-owned enterprise that operates the app, branding, marketing and customer experience, while Kalshi runs the underlying exchange, including matching, clearing, custody and surveillance.

The tribe has presented the arrangement as an exercise in economic independence, portfolio diversification and sustainable revenue for future generations. Chairman Marshall Pierite said the partnership offered a model in which tribes could be “owners, innovators and leaders.” Kalshi chief executive Tarek Mansour similarly argued that prediction markets could offer Indian Country additional paths to economic self-determination.

SaltTrade allows participants to trade event contracts tied to future events in a marketplace with defined rules and objectively verifiable results. The venture followed a conditional no-action letter from Commodity Futures Trading Commission staff concerning the tribe’s participation in CFTC-jurisdiction event-contract and derivatives markets; SaltTrade will not itself be registered with the agency under that relief.

CNIGA said its concern extended beyond one partnership. It accused Kalshi, Polymarket and other well-funded prediction-market companies of pushing sports gambling while claiming that laws applied to other operators did not apply to them. It also said a Kalshi partnership undermined generations of tribal leaders’ work to ensure that tribal governments, rather than corporations, benefited from gaming on tribal lands.

Other national tribal groups have taken a similar position. The National Congress of American Indians and the Indian Gaming Association have said sports-event contracts are illegal gaming when offered outside federal, state and tribal gaming law, and have called for meaningful government-to-government consultation with tribal nations on federal policy affecting gaming and sovereignty.

The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe said SaltTrade may expand beyond software for trading event contracts into other offerings as opportunities arise.