A recent legislative proposal called the Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act is pending review in the House of Representatives. The bill, sponsored by a bipartisan group of representatives, would force prediction market and sportsbook apps to incorporate facial recognition technology into age and account verification protocols before a user is able to successfully log in or make a trade.
READ: HR 9706 – Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act (introduced July 15th, 2026)
While there’s no mention of subverting state-licensed sportsbook minimum age requirements (many of which are placed at 21 years of age), the bill would establish a minimum 18-year-old threshold to access prediction market accounts and engage in trading activity.
Language within the proposal would force regulated sportsbook apps and prediction market platforms in the US to use facial recognition technology to identify account holders upon logging in to their accounts or when attempting to make a trade or wager. However, only the first few paragraphs of the proposal deal directly with thwarting underage use of sportsbook apps and prediction market exchanges.
The bill subsequently includes amendments to the Commodity Exchange Act as it relates to prediction markets. If passed as is, the proposal would change several sections of the CEA to give the CFTC broader control over whether to allow event contracts related to “gaming” while overwriting CFTC Rule 40.11(a).
This would “empower the CFTC to review each contract on a case-by-case basis,” according to Miami Law School professor Daniel Wallach. “Rule 40.11(a) bars all event contracts relating to or involving ‘gaming’ [without] any further case-by-case public interest analysis.”
The Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act would also alter the default language that would be used to deem an event contract “contrary to the public interest.” The text within the proposal states, “In the rules and regulations promulgated under clause (i), the Commission shall provide that an event contract is likely to be contrary to the public interest if the event contract materially encourages violence or similar unlawful activity.”
This language would provide CFTC regulators with a more refined scope for determining which types of contracts are not allowed once specific rules around prediction markets are established. By eliminating “gaming” contracts as a category that might prompt automatic scrutiny from the agency, federal regulators might have more leeway to approve sports-based contracts that would otherwise need to be approved on a case-by-case basis.
Although HR 9706 has been introduced in the House of Representatives, it must still pass the Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as the Committee on Agriculture to advance to a full floor vote. The next step for the Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act is a committee hearing or a markup session later this year.
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