Oklahoma tribe's leadership feud clouds Kalshi partnership deal
Kalshi says it has a signed agreement with Oklahoma's Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town, but a rival chief says the tribe never authorized it, exposing a leadership feud the federal government has not resolved.
A Kalshi tribal partnership dispute in Oklahoma is testing the prediction market's strategy of signing deals with Native American nations. On Oct. 13, Samuel Marshall Jr., who says he is chief of the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town, said any claim that the tribe had agreed to partner with Kalshi or any other prediction market app was false. Kalshi says a signed agreement is in place.
What happened
Marshall's statement went further, arguing that prediction markets undermine the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and Oklahoma's tribal-state compacts. He told Front Office Sports he learned of the deal from a CNN report. The tribe has fewer than 500 members.
Kalshi's side is just as firm. A representative told FOS that the tribe's counsel "approved an agreement with Kalshi to launch a prediction market, and there is a signed agreement in place to that effect." Consultant Michael Stopp, who brokered the deal, says it was made by the tribe's legitimate leadership under Wilson Yargee.
The federal record does not settle it. The Bureau of Indian Affairs lists both Marshall and Yargee as chiefs and notes a tribal leadership dispute, FOS reported. Yargee was elected in 2021, and Marshall's camp says he was removed months later, a step Stopp calls illegitimate. A federal court dismissed a 2022 suit between the factions as an intertribal matter outside its jurisdiction.
Past rulings have favored Yargee on narrow points. In a 2022 mail dispute, the U.S. Postal Service said he was entitled to receive the tribe's mail because Marshall had not shown that a majority vote of town members removed him. Tribal administrator Brian Palmer told FOS that nobody from Kalshi had contacted the Marshall leadership.
Why it matters
The Kalshi tribal partnership dispute matters because tribal deals are part of Kalshi's answer to state opposition. It announced its first agreement with Louisiana's Tunica-Biloxi Tribe in September and four more on Oct. 7, with Alabama-Quassarte and three California tribes: Greenville Rancheria, Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation and Alturas Indian Rancheria. The tribes receive a share of the fees Kalshi collects.
Many tribes see the platform as a threat. Tribes in New Mexico, California and Wisconsin have sued Kalshi and other operators, and a coalition of 145 tribes asked the Supreme Court this month to take up a sports event contract case, FOS reported. Chief executive Tarek Mansour has argued that tribal sovereignty means different tribes will make different choices.
Stopp, a former chief of staff to Markwayne Mullin, said the leadership fight traces back to 2020, when two former tribal leaders received federal prison sentences in a bribery and embezzlement case, after which Yargee was elected on a promise of change. Marshall's allies say the rival group are not even members.
The fight adds to Kalshi's busy regulatory calendar, from its anti-harassment rule for athletes to its chief executive's push on state oversight. Predictable reported that Tunica-Biloxi has already launched a Kalshi-backed app.
What's next
Neither side shows interest in mediation. "We attempted that at one point," Stopp told FOS. "There is no longer any interest in doing that." Without a federal ruling on who leads the tribe, the Oklahoma venture's status stays unclear.
Watch whether the Alabama-Quassarte app launches and whether Oklahoma's gaming tribes escalate. The Kalshi tribal partnership dispute could also feature in the Supreme Court fight over who regulates sports contracts.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.