The chief executives of Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts International and Wynn Resorts used the main CEO session at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas to describe a split Las Vegas market and to set out where each company stands on prediction markets.
The session, titled “CEO Outlook: The Global State of Gaming”, brought together Caesars CEO Tom Reeg, MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle and Wynn CEO Craig Billings. The discussion covered hotel pricing and occupancy on the Strip, softer demand from value-oriented leisure guests, strong luxury and convention business, international visitation, geopolitics and overseas expansion.
Prediction markets took up the sharpest part of the debate. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket offer event contracts on sport and other outcomes under federal commodities law, and the licensed casino operators on stage treated them as a direct commercial and regulatory threat.
A two-speed Las Vegas
Reeg placed the weakness in Las Vegas with one group of guests. When conventions and group bookings are absent from the city, he said, the leisure visitor has not filled the gap the way it did in previous years.
“It’s the leisure customer. When the group business is not here, the leisure customer is not as strong as it has been.”
The other side of the market held up. The panel pointed to continued strength from high-end customers and from the convention calendar. The pressure sits with the value-oriented guest Reeg described.
The CEOs also discussed international visitation to Las Vegas and how geopolitics affects travel into the US, alongside expansion into markets outside Nevada.
Hornbuckle: prediction markets are hurting the industry
Hornbuckle gave the most direct assessment of the commercial damage.
“Prediction markets are hurting the industry, full stop.”
He said MGM considered entering prediction markets in early 2025 and dropped the idea after weighing the risk to its core licences. The Nevada Gaming Control Board had warned operators that offering prediction market products could put their Nevada gaming licences at risk, and with them the casino, sports betting and iGaming businesses that depend on those licences.
Hornbuckle also questioned why prediction market platforms accept customers aged 18 when the minimum age for casino gaming and sports betting in Nevada is 21. He said the platforms are welcome to compete on the same terms as licensed operators.
“If they want to come in Nevada and pay a license, and do what we all do, God bless them.”
Reeg: “We’ve lived through this before”
Reeg compared the dispute with the arrival of daily fantasy sports (DFS) in the mid-2010s, when fantasy operators expanded nationwide before state regulators and legislatures moved to bring them under licensing.
“We’ve lived through this before with [daily fantasy sports].”
His most pointed example involved Caesars itself. A prediction market contract on whether Caesars would go private in 2026 was open for trading, and Reeg said nothing in the platform’s terms would have stopped him, as CEO, from taking a position on it.
“There was nowhere in their rules that said I couldn’t place a bet.”
The remark goes to the insider trading concern that licensed operators and state regulators have raised about event contracts. Licensed US sportsbooks bar athletes, team staff and other insiders from betting on markets they can influence. Reeg’s point was that no equivalent restriction applied to a corporate CEO trading on his own company.
Wynn takes no position
Billings took a more cautious line. Wynn does not run a national US online sportsbook, and Billings said the company does not take a public stance on the issue.
“We don’t take a political position on prediction markets because we don’t have skin in the game.”
That leaves the commercial case against prediction markets with the two largest Strip operators. Both also run national online sportsbooks: BetMGM is the third-largest US online sportsbook and Caesars Sportsbook the fifth-largest, according to industry rankings.
The legal dispute behind the panel
Prediction market operators argue that federal commodities law allows them to offer sports event contracts nationwide under oversight from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). State regulators argue that those contracts are sports wagers and need a state licence. The question is now before several federal courts.
European regulators are working through the same question of how event contracts fit existing gambling law. The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) said at SBC Summit that prediction markets may fit within Malta’s licensing framework.
What comes next
For Caesars and MGM, the immediate decision is already made: neither plans to enter prediction markets while Nevada regulators treat it as a licensing risk. The open question is how long the federal courts take to decide whether event contracts are commodities or wagers, and whether Congress or the CFTC changes the rules first.
Until then, licensed operators will keep paying state taxes and licence fees while competing with platforms that pay neither, in a Las Vegas market where the leisure guest is already spending less.
Source: Global Gaming Expo (G2E)
