Key points:
- Slane has announced that she will be joining Kalshi as Head of Corporate Development
- Slane played a vital role working as SVP of the AGA during to oversee the abolition of PASPA
- Her appointment comes during a period of severe legal scrutiny for the operator
Sara Slane has announced that she is joining prediction market operator Kalshi as the company’s new Head of Corporate Development.
Indeed, Slane has confirmed that the decision came after she began consulting for Kalshi a matter of months ago with her gaming strategy advisory firm, Slane Advisory. Slane founded the company in 2019 and has acted as the company’s founder for over five years. Prior to this, she was an SVP at the American Gaming Association and played a key role in campaigning for the overturning of PASPA which saw regulated sports betting arrive in the US market in 2018.
With an additional seven years of experience as VP Regional Government Affairs at MGM Resorts International, Slane is a capable and experienced individual within the US sports betting landscape. Now, as part of her new role at Kalshi, she is set to handle the demands of gaming integration as the operator looks to steer the ship through a storm of legal turbulence related to its recently launched sports events prediction markets.
Commenting on her appointment via LinkedIn, Slane stated: “In large part due to their obsession with product experience, I have never seen a company in a stage of explosive growth like Kalshi. Within a few months of launching sports, they have already managed to build a frontier product experience, with better pricing, robust risk management, and captivating live charts. The trading volume, web traffic, attention in the media, and the long list of companies ready to integrate as brokers with Kalshi is staggering.
Good to know: In the past two weeks, Kalshi has received cease-and-desist letters from six different US states pertaining to its sports events prediction markets
“I’m joining as Head of Corporate Development to help handle some of that integration demand. There’s palpable industry excitement about the benefits prediction markets can provide, and I’m thrilled to be working towards a future where all of the operators have prediction markets as part of their product.”
As part of her announcement, Slane specifies the collaboration undergone by Kalshi with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in becoming the first federally regulated predict market in the US. However, since that time, much debate has befallen the operator as some believe it has recently overstepped its jurisdiction by offering prediction markets on sports events.
More specifically, the contention lies within the fact that, if these markets can be legally defined as sports betting, then they should not be offered within all 50 states, to anyone over the age of 18, unlicensed by individual state regulators and without paying the relevant tax. This definition, however, is yet to be concluded by the CFTC.
