WHO IS PROTECTED BY YOUR STATE'S GAMING RULES? HINT, IT ISN'T YOU.
THE CASINO LOBBY
IS IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT.
YOU'RE NOT EVEN
IN THE CAR.
Chris Christie is the casino lobby's hand inside your statehouse.
Here is the paper trail and what it's costing you.
A STATE REGULATOR SENT A LETTER. THE CASINO LOBBY WROTE IT.
Maryland's gaming regulator sent the CFTC a letter urging a crackdown on prediction markets. Public records obtained through a FOIA request by Fox45 Baltimore showed the letter was a near-verbatim copy of a draft supplied by the American Gaming Association, the casino industry's lobbying arm. The regulator did not just take the lobby's advice. It signed the lobby's words. Nobody asked the people those rules land on.
WHAT THEY ARE ACTUALLY TRYING TO TAKE AWAY FROM YOU.
A prediction market is a federally regulated exchange. You trade with other people, the price moves on what everyone else thinks will happen, and nobody sits on the other side of your money with an interest in you losing. A sportsbook is the other model: the house sets the line and the house makes money when you don't. The letters are not about protecting consumers from anything. They are about protecting one model from the other.
"One model has a house. One does not. Guess which one they are writing letters to shut down."
CHRIS CHRISTIE ISN'T A REFEREE. HE'S ON THE CASINO LOBBY'S PAYROLL.
Christie represents the American Gaming Association, the trade group for the commercial casinos that lose money when Americans trade on prediction markets instead of betting through their sportsbooks. He is the paid face of an effort to shut down the competition. And Maryland was not a one-off. Records show the AGA ran the same playbook with regulators in other states, including Massachusetts. One lobby, one script, government signatures across the country.
Not even the industry is united behind it — FanDuel and DraftKings both walked away from the AGA over this fight.
MARYLAND WAS NOT A ONE-OFF.
Records show the AGA ran the same playbook with regulators in other states, including Massachusetts. One lobby, one script, government signatures across the country — and in every one of those states, the people whose choices got smaller never got a say.
"One lobby. One script. Government signatures across the country."
DON'T LET THE CASINO LOBBY WRITE THE RULES.
THE DOCUMENTS ARE PUBLIC. THE PATTERN IS CLEAR.
NOW MAKE THEM ANSWER FOR IT.