Ohio senator pushes bills to license prediction markets as sports betting
Sen. Bill DeMora says a Sixth Circuit ruling should force Ohio lawmakers to regulate and tax platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket as sports gambling.
Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora (D-Columbus) is pressing colleagues to pass legislation that would classify sports prediction markets as sports gambling and separately ban election-related event contracts, telling SBC Americas a recent federal appeals court ruling should finally push the issue through the legislature.
DeMora introduced Senate Bill 430 in April. The bill would amend state law so that the definition of "sports gaming" explicitly covers prediction markets trading on sporting outcomes, requiring such platforms to obtain licences from the Ohio Casino Control Commission (OCCC) to operate in the state.
On 13 October he filed a second bill, SB 479, which would add "election gambling" to Ohio's list of prohibited gambling activities. Under the measure, anyone who uses a prediction market in full knowledge that it is being used to trade on an event contract linked to a political election outcome would be committing an offence. Ohio-licensed sportsbooks are already barred from taking bets on elections.
DeMora pointed to a unanimous ruling issued on 25 September by the federal appeals court that covers Ohio and Tennessee, which combined cases from both states and concluded that Kalshi's sports contracts do not qualify as swaps under the commodities laws that govern federal markets. The panel ruled that neither state is barred from enforcing its sports betting laws against the products.
The decision backed an earlier finding from the Southern District of Ohio that had turned down Kalshi's bid for a preliminary injunction, and it threw out a separate order from a Tennessee federal court that had stopped enforcement there.
"The Sixth Circuit ruled that states can regulate predictive markets like sports gambling, which they are," DeMora said. "It's time. Even our Republican governor said that these things are sports gambling. I agree with him. We need to regulate them and start taxing them like we're doing with sports betting."
SB 430 went to the Select Committee on Gaming in May and has sat there since. DeMora said he hopes the appeals court ruling gives both bills renewed momentum, and plans to reintroduce his legislative agenda, including these bills, when the General Assembly's new two-year cycle begins in January 2027.
He is the sole sponsor of SB 430, while SB 479 has three co-sponsors, all Democratic senators. DeMora argued the issue is not partisan, framing it instead as a matter of states' authority to regulate industries operating within their borders, and said he has told colleagues the state lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" in the last two-year budget cycle by not regulating prediction markets.
He also noted a leadership gap on the issue: Sen. Nathan Manning, whom DeMora called the only other senator who "knows anything about gambling", left the chamber in August to take up a seat on the Ninth District Court of Appeals, leaving the Senate Gaming Committee needing a new chair. Ohio will also get a new governor once Republican Gov. Mike DeWine's term ends at the close of 2026.
"At some point, my colleagues are going to need to get educated enough," DeMora said, adding that some lawmakers "don't understand it" because prediction markets are not something they use themselves.
The OCCC has already moved independently since the ruling. The regulator had announced plans earlier in 2026 to fine Kalshi $5m, and last month sent cease-and-desist letters to ten other prediction market operators demanding they shut down sports event contracts in Ohio.
"The Sixth Circuit's ruling makes clear that sports event contracts are subject to Ohio's gambling laws," OCCC Interim Executive Director Andromeda Morrison said at the time, according to SBC Americas.