The chairman of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) has gained a reputation for steering thoughtful discussion around sports betting regulation, even if it takes a little longer than many participants would prefer. The 37-year old attorney, a native of Pikeville, Kentucky, is laid back and speaks calmly with an Appalachian twang. He is quick to note the boundaries of his role: “My job is to regulate, not to legislate. If I want to legislate, I’ll go run for office.” But he is still capable of getting rankled from time to time. This is one of those times.
First appointed as a commissioner to the MGC in 2022 and promoted by Gov. Maura Healy to chairman in October 2024, Jordan Maynard is steadfast in his belief that anyone taking sports wagers from residents of his state needs a license from the MGC to do it.
Maynard was responding to a question about prediction markets during a recent conversation at the Next.io conference in the financial district of New York City, and more specifically, the lawsuit initiated by the Massachusetts attorney general against prediction market Kalshi, one of the leading platforms that has completely disrupted the U.S. sports betting industry over the past 15 months.
“Anytime someone takes a sports wager in Massachusetts, they should do it under a license from Massachusetts Gaming Commission,” Maynard said. “To think that we put all that time into it and something inferior comes along, it’s really upsetting as a regulator. It’s really frustrating.”
Jurisdiction and villains
This sentiment, that Kalshi and its ilk are illegally operating exchanges nationally where roughly 90% of the volume comes from trades on sporting events, is what drove the commonwealth’s decision to become the first state to proactively sue Kalshi and secure a court injunction against the company.
In January, a Suffolk County Superior Court judge sided with the Massachusetts AG’s office, ruling that Kalshi’s sports event contracts are subject to state gaming law, and issuing a preliminary injunction barring the platform from operating in the state without a license. The court rejected Kalshi’s argument that its federal registration with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) preempts state authority, calling the position “overly broad.” The ruling landed a few months after AG Andrea Campbell filed suit in September 2025, alleging Kalshi was offering sports wagering disguised as event contracts.
Kalshi argues in Massachusetts and in at least a dozen state and federal cases underway across the country that the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over its platform and its markets, which they say qualify as derivatives and therefore does not answer to the MGC or any state regulatory body anywhere.
Maynard is frustrated because he trusts the process, and believes the dialogue with (state) regulators is essential to best serve the states’ people. Massachusetts spent years building its sports betting legal and regulatory framework, with multiple legislative drafts, gubernatorial review, and rulemaking that drew on jurisdictions across the country and around the world. The arrival of a platform that sidesteps that process struck a nerve.
But Maynard went further than frustration.
“Prediction markets may be even more harmful than the offshore books, because it looks regulated at the same level as the states, and it’s not,” he said. “I consider it a pseudo-regulated industry.”
The offshore market has long been cast as the primary villain in legalization debates: unlicensed, unregulated, offering no consumer protections and contributing no tax revenue. For Maynard to suggest that prediction markets may represent greater consumer harm because they carry the imprimatur of legitimacy, is an escalation in the rhetorical battle between state regulators and the platforms fighting to stand their ground.
‘Welcome to regulating’
The legal fight over prediction markets is, effectively, a federalism vs. states’ rights dispute. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig has publicly asserted the agency’s exclusive jurisdiction over event contracts and withdrawn a prior presidential administration’s proposed rule that would have constrained sports-related markets. Meanwhile, states including Nevada, Tennessee, Michigan, and Massachusetts have pushed enforcement actions, and at least nine others have issued cease-and-desist letters.
Maynard’s take on the CFTC’s position was diplomatic in tone but unmistakable in substance.
“I think that my counterpart at the CFTC is learning that regulating isn’t always easy… ‘welcome to regulating’ is what I would say to the chair,” he said.
The remark captures a tension that runs through the entire dispute. State gaming commissions have spent years developing enforcement infrastructure, responsible gaming programs, and consumer protection standards. The CFTC, by contrast, is a commodities regulator now in the middle of questions about underage access, problem gambling, payout disputes, insider trading, and advertising standards — issues it was not designed to address.
Some of these issues are up for discussion and remediation as a new round of CFTC rulemaking to address a variety of pressing prediction market topics is underway. Meanwhile, Maynard pointed to recent incidents involving prediction market operators and inconsistent payout practices as evidence that the federal agency is out over its skis.
Betting limits and coalition building
To be sure, the MGC and various state gaming agencies have their critics and face criticisms of their own. Chief among them is the notion that these agencies exist to serve profit-driven operator licensees, and that some of those operators engage in predatory practices to the detriment of consumers. One persistent complaint is that sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel eject winners or any player who shows some acumen, preferring to cull a pool of recreational patrons who consistently lose money.
It’s that practice, known as “limiting” or the “ban or bankrupt” model, that Maynard is taking to task directly.
“I am the first chair that I know of in the entire United States to call the operators in and talk about limiting, and do something about it too, with some regulations around it for the legal operators,” he said. “We’re holding them to this high standard of having that peerless privilege of a state issued license.”
The new rule, set to take effect in June, requires that sportsbooks provide 48 hours notice before the time they intend to impose limits on a bettor. That notification cannot be boilerplate, and actually requires specific explanation beyond something cursory like “due to a business decision.” And there will be a compliance checkpoint for operators in April. We shall see how it functions in practice.
Kalshi and other prediction market platforms, for their part, claim their exchange model is inherently superior on this front: users trade against one another rather than against the house, which they say eliminates the house incentive to limit winners. However, that claim is also a matter of dispute. Critics point to the large amount of liquidity provided by sharp institutional trading firms, as well as trading arms like Kalshi Trading that are aligned in some way with the exchange itself, as evidence that the playing field may not be as level as advertised.
Maynard’s approach to the limiting rules reflects a broader governing philosophy. Rather than impose mandates unilaterally, he described a regulatory process rooted in stakeholder engagement, one that aims to get operators to buy into the standards they’ll be held to, rather than simply hammering them atop the head.
“Government works best when it builds coalitions around ideas,” Maynard said. “I want to identify an issue or a problem or an opportunity for something to be better, and then I want the operators to work with us on how that works.”
Maynard is also keeping a close eye on access by residents in the 18 to 20 range, and problem gambling more broadly, particularly as prediction market platforms have marketed to users as young as 18, three years below the legal sports betting age in Massachusetts. Recent Wall Street Journal reporting on prediction market companies actively recruiting on college campuses has intensified those concerns.
When it comes to setting expectations for what sports betting should be, Maynard frames it simply as entertainment.
“I go to concerts all the time. I love to go to different breweries. I never expect a return on the money for that,” he said. “So it’s making sure that it’s done for entertainment. Any time it’s not done for entertainment, we have a potential problem.”
Whether the courts ultimately vindicate Maynard’s position or Kalshi’s will take possibly years to resolve. Until then, Maynard and the MGC will continue to do their thing, and take their time, too.
