The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has submitted two related rulemakings on event contracts to the White House's Office of Management and Budget, in a move designed to anchor prediction markets firmly within the agency's swaps regulatory framework and sever the products from state gambling law.

Disclosures dated September 28 show the CFTC delivered both items to OMB this week, where review typically represents the final stage before a rule is proposed for public comment. One rulemaking would extend the regulatory definition of swaps to include event contracts — the binary yes-or-no instruments on measurable outcomes such as sporting events and elections that are traded on platforms including Kalshi, Polymarket, Crypto.com and Robinhood. The other, filed as an "interim final rule," would remove "casino-style gambling products" from the universe of instruments that can constitute a swap. An interim final rule takes effect immediately upon publication while remaining open to public comment and revision.

The CFTC disclosed no further detail or draft text, and designated both rules as not "economically significant."

The timing is pointed. Last week the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that sports-tied contracts on Kalshi are not swaps and fall under state gambling regulation. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reached a similar conclusion in its own ruling. But the Third Circuit previously held that the CFTC holds proper jurisdiction over prediction markets, leaving a circuit split at the federal level and raising the probability that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually be asked to resolve the question.

The commission's legal position, if finalized, would undercut the foundation of a wide array of state lawsuits against prediction market operators — most routinely Kalshi — that accuse the platforms of running unlicensed gambling operations. The logic is straightforward: if event contracts are swaps, and swaps cannot be gambling products, the states' core theory of jurisdiction weakens considerably. Swaps are two-party exchange agreements regulated by the CFTC under federal commodities law, and the proposed definitions would make that classification explicit for event contracts rather than leaving it to judicial inference.

The agency has not been a bystander in the litigation. It has repeatedly sued states directly, defending what Chairman Mike Selig has argued is the CFTC's sole jurisdiction over prediction markets. The campaign reflects a deliberate institutional posture: the commission has fully embraced its role as the federal regulator of the sector, moving from ad hoc enforcement to a durable definitional framework.

Selig's authority to act rests on an unusual footing. The CFTC is statutorily structured as a five-member commission, but President Donald Trump has so far declined to nominate additional commissioners, leaving Selig as its lone member. He has consequently been making regulatory and policy decisions unilaterally — including these submissions.

The event-contract rules are not the only items in the pipeline. OMB disclosures also reflect a recently submitted CFTC "prerule" on crypto regulation, though the agency has not described the scope of that effort.

For platform operators, the definitional fix carries significant operational consequences: a swaps classification would preserve single federal oversight, standardized listing processes and access to national markets, while a gambling characterization would fragment compliance across dozens of state regimes with licensing, geofencing and consumer-protection requirements more akin to casinos. The OMB review period — typically lasting up to 90 days, though often shorter — will determine when the proposals reach the Federal Register and open for comment.