A US House subcommittee has examined the spread of sports betting on college campuses, hearing calls for routine gambling screening of students and federal guidance for universities, in a session that did not include any witnesses from the betting industry.

The Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, part of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, held the hearing, titled “The Rise of Sports Gambling on College Campuses”, on Wednesday, 11 November. It was led by subcommittee vice chair Michael Baumgartner, a Washington Republican.

“Miniature casinos in the palms of our hands”

In his opening statement, Baumgartner said sports betting was now legal in 39 states and that regulated handle had grown from just under $5bn a year before the 2018 Supreme Court ruling to $167bn last year. He grouped prediction markets with sportsbooks, saying: “Online sportsbooks and prediction market apps have placed miniature casinos in the palms of our hands.”

Baumgartner cited NCAA survey data from 2023 showing 67% of students living on campus had bet on sports, 16% had shown problem gambling behaviours and 6% had lost more than $500 in a single day. He also pointed to a recent survey of college administrators in which only 3% said their institution had updated financial literacy or orientation materials to cover gambling, and noted that student-athletes are the only campus population currently required to receive gambling education.

He added that an undergraduate survey released last month found 31% of male students and 25% of female students knew someone who had suffered “financial distress or academic fallout from online wagering losses”, and that students who had gambled online were 10% more likely to report struggling to pay for basics such as medication, transport and housing. Another survey, he said, found more than one in five students had used financial aid to place bets.

Screening gap

Cindy Clouner, managing director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery at Ohio State University, told the panel that only 2% of students report ever being asked about gambling by a campus professional, against 16.6% asked about alcohol or substance use and 37% about mental health. “This absence of routine screening allows problem gambling to remain invisible until students face catastrophic financial loss or acute psychological crisis,” she said, according to the committee’s hearing summary. Her written testimony asked Congress to publish a national call to action with guidance for campuses.

Dr Lindsey Mortenson, chief mental health officer at the University of Michigan, said clinicians often lack the training to recognise gambling disorder, describing the gambling content in most curricula as outdated for the online betting era. Dr Daniel Durkin of the University of Mississippi warned that student-athletes face pressure from peers in debt to influence individual plays.

Regulator’s view

The only regulator on the panel was Jordan Maynard, chair of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, whose state bans proposition bets on individual college athletes. His commission is separately pursuing an adjudicatory hearing against FanDuel over alleged proxy betting. Trade press reporting on the session noted that prediction markets, which operate under federal CFTC oversight rather than state gaming law, again complicated a congressional discussion framed around state-regulated sportsbooks.

The hearing produced no legislation, but it adds to pressure in Washington for federal involvement in sports betting policy. Commercial and tribal operators, who were not invited to testify, can expect college betting, athlete harassment and prop markets to stay on the agenda as Congress weighs whether to set federal standards.

Brazil’s National Congress has extended the provisional measure that banned fixed-odds betting by a further 60 days, keeping the prohibition in force into March 2027 while lawmakers have yet to begin formally examining it.

The extension of Provisional Measure (MP) 1,394/2026 was signed by Senate and Congress president Davi Alcolumbre and published in the Official Gazette on Wednesday, 11 November, according to local trade reports. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the measure on 25 September, banning the operation, offer, intermediation and advertising of sports betting and online casino games with immediate effect.

Recess pushes the deadline back

Under Brazil’s constitution, a provisional measure has the force of law for 60 days, extendable once by another 60, and lapses unless Congress converts it into law within that window. The clock stops during the parliamentary recess, which runs from 22 December to 2 February. Senate legislative consultant Gilberto Guerzoni said that suspension means the betting MP will now remain valid until around 4 March 2027.

“In practice, a provisional measure, whatever it may be, including this one, has a deadline of 120 days from the date it is issued. However, when Congress enters recess, that deadline is suspended,” Guerzoni said, as reported by iGaming Brasil.

The extended timetable gives Congress more room, but the process has barely started. The mixed committee of deputies and senators that must report on the MP before floor votes in both houses has not yet been installed. Lawmakers approved an urgency request linked to the measure on Monday, 9 November.

Pressure on the ban is building on several fronts at once. Enforcement against the unlicensed market has continued in parallel, with the Ministry of Justice and Public Security this week targeting 348 social media influencers accused of promoting illegal betting, while federal courts have been asked to rule on individual operators’ attempts to keep trading.

Courts and Senate hearings

The ban remains under challenge at the Supreme Federal Court (STF), where four direct actions of unconstitutionality have been filed against the MP. Rapporteur Minister Luiz Fux, who has said betting should be prohibited, held a ten-hour public hearing on the challenges earlier this month. Separately, the Senate Economic Affairs Committee is preparing a public hearing on the economic and social impact of the ban at the request of Senator Veneziano Vital do Rêgo. No date has been set.

The government has argued that the regulatory and monitoring framework built under Law 14,790/2023 was not adequate to protect the public. Operators counter that shutting the licensed market leaves players exposed to unlicensed sites with no controls. The 85 federal licences issued under that framework, each costing R$30m, expired at the end of October, with no refund of fees.

What comes next

For international operators and suppliers that had built Brazilian businesses since the market opened in January 2025, the extension prolongs uncertainty rather than resolving it. Congress could still amend the measure, for example by restoring a narrower licensed regime, reject it, or let it lapse, while the STF has yet to rule on its constitutionality. With the committee still to be formed and the recess approaching, a decision on the future of Brazilian betting is now unlikely before February.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has warned Kalshi that it faces imminent charges over the way it notified the agency of new contracts, according to reports by Politico and Reuters, opening an unexpected federal front for a prediction market operator that has so far relied on the CFTC as its main ally against state gambling regulators.

Politico first reported on 10 November that the regulator was poised to bring charges. Reuters followed the same day, citing a person familiar with the matter who said Kalshi had received a notification warning of imminent charges. No charges had been filed as of 11 November, and the CFTC did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Self-certification at issue

According to the reports, the warning follows a months-long investigation into whether Kalshi properly notified the CFTC of dozens of new products. As a designated contract market, Kalshi can list most new contracts by self-certifying them to the regulator, rather than seeking prior approval.

Kalshi has played down the matter. The warning “is about a procedural error involving the submission of a handful of contracts, many of which weren’t live,” the company told Reuters, adding: “We are already addressing the issue.”

Neither report described the warning as a formal notice of a specific enforcement recommendation, and the potential penalty, if any, is unknown. A procedural case would be far narrower than the existential challenges Kalshi faces from states, but it would be the first time its federal regulator has moved against it in the current sports contracts boom.

An awkward moment for the CFTC

The reports land as the CFTC is aggressively defending prediction markets against state action. Last week the agency told prediction markets to stop geofencing out individual states within 30 days, and it has sued Utah, which filed criminal charges against Kalshi and its two co-founders in late October.

State attorneys general and gaming regulators are likely to seize on any federal enforcement action as evidence that the CFTC’s oversight of event contracts is less robust than prediction market operators claim. Arkansas became the latest state to go to court this week, suing Kalshi and Chumba operator VGW over illegal gambling.

The news also arrives less than two weeks after Kalshi raised $1bn at a $40bn valuation, underlining how quickly the regulatory risk around the sector is evolving even as capital continues to pour in.

Political pressure builds

Pressure on prediction markets is also building in Washington. Following last week’s elections, Democratic lawmakers have stepped up scrutiny: Representative Ro Khanna has called on Congress to ban sports prediction markets, according to The Hill, and Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she will increase oversight of the sector, according to Decrypt.

A CFTC case over Kalshi’s certification practices would not on its own change the legal status of sports event contracts, which remains before multiple federal appeals courts and potentially the Supreme Court. But it would give the agency’s critics an argument at a sensitive moment, and it could prompt other exchanges listing large numbers of self-certified contracts to review their own filings with the regulator.