CFTC to Allow 50-State Access for Sports Event Contracts Under Designated Contract Market Framework

Novig will transition this summer from operating a sweepstakes product in 35 states to a federal Designated Contract Market framework, CEO Jacob Fortinsky said Thursday. The shift would allow the company to offer sports event contracts in all 50 states.

The comments came during a panel discussion at Consensus Miami 2026 in Miami Beach, Florida. Fortinsky, co-founder and CEO of the sports betting platform Novig, argued that sports event contracts should be regulated as binary financial instruments rather than state-licensed gambling products.

"Sports betting is really the only industry in the country that regularly limits and bans their power users," Fortinsky said. He added that globally, sports betting is a $2 trillion asset class still dominated by legacy casinos.

An earlier attempt by Novig to be regulated at the state level in Colorado highlighted tensions with local authorities, Fortinsky said. "Regulators told us you're naive if you think we care about consumer protection or innovation or market efficiency. We really just care about our tax revenue," he said of the Colorado experience.

Adam Mastrelli, founder of 57 Maiden, a firm that builds AI-driven trading strategies for prediction markets, said he and his partner were banned from two major sportsbooks within two months for being sharp. "My partner and I got kicked off of two big sportsbooks within two months of trading because we were sharp," Mastrelli said.

The team turned to Novig, which charges no fees and allows traders to create synthetic positions, he added.

Of 154 proposed trading strategies, only three currently run profitably, Mastrelli said. His most profitable season was the WNBA. Fortinsky argued that sports is counterintuitively the safest vertical within prediction markets due to bigger insider-trading and manipulation concerns around political and event-driven contracts.