Inside Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour’s testy – Business News
Kalshi’s dicey relationship with Native American casinos went south after CEO Tarek Mansour held unsuccessful talks to fix variations with tribal leaders – leading to a flurry of lawsuits that would pose existential menace to the prediction market giant’s business, The Post has realized.
Kalshi affords wagers throughout a slew of real-world occasions – from the Oscars to the climate in France to the costs at Costco – betting on sports activities occasions accounts for as a lot as 70% of an estimated $4 billion in income during the 12 months ended this July, based on a source close to the company.
While Kalshi says its wagers are financial devices that it calls “event contracts” and “swaps,” the tribes have sued to stop them, countering that they quantity to unauthorized sports activities playing beneath federal Indian gaming legal guidelines.
Victor Rocha, convention Chair on the Indian Gaming Association, has known as Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour a “lying little twerp.” linkedin/Victor Rocha
Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals ruled towards Kalshi in a single tribal go well with, setting the stage for a showdown within the Supreme Court that dangers crippling the app’s exploding business.
The battle hadn’t but damaged into the open when Mansour – Kalshi’s 30-year-old, bespectacled, billionaire boss – held a March 2025 video call with Victor Rocha, a member of the highly effective Pechanga Band of Indians and convention chairman for the Indian Gaming Association, sources close to the state of affairs stated.
During the call, Mansour requested Rocha – an influential tribal chief who Kalshi hoped may help bridge a growing divide over their competing companies – to hitch Kalshi as an advisor, insiders stated. But Rocha – an outspoken determine on social media who has branded himself Indian Country’s “attack dog” – swiftly rebuffed the offer.
In an interview with The Post, Rocha stated Mansour’s overture got here off like an attempt to scale back him to a token “cigar store Indian” so Kalshi may say “Hey, look, we have an Indian on our side.”
Rocha added that Mansour’s proposal regarded like a ploy to “divide the tribal community” by creating the false phantasm that Kalshi was an ally to Native Americans. In actuality, the New York-based startup was siphoning off income from Indian casinos and tribes had been weighing how to handle the menace, Rocha stated.
A Kalshi spokeswoman stated neither she nor Mansour recalled the initial call with Rocha.
Tarek Mansour’s Kalshi has been at battle with Indian tribes after a sequence of calls he had final yr with tribal leaders spiraled. Bloomberg by way of Getty Images
While Rocha stated the primary call tainted his trust within the billionaire tech founder, insiders say a subsequent breakdown in talks has likewise left Kalshi execs fuming and fed up with the tribes’ “hypocritical” and sympathy-seeking arguments.
In specific, Kalshi is irked by the $46 billion in playing income that the Indian Gaming Commission took in final yr – a 5.3% bump from the prior yr – whereas on the similar time claiming it’s getting bled dry by prediction markets.
Kalshi execs have griped that tribal gaming is “a juggernaut, not an underdog” and they’re working a “coordinated, not organic” marketing campaign to stifle competitors, at the same time as they make noise concerning the loss of income to fund health and dependancy clinics.
The beforehand unreported talks – which grew to incorporate different high Kalshi executives and tribal gaming leaders – offer a behind-the-scenes have a look at how the gaming giants sized one another up shortly earlier than the tribes slapped Kalshi with a trio of lawsuits supposed to hamstring its business.
Jason Giles, govt director of the Indian Gaming Association, warned tribes about Kalsh. LinkedIn/Jason Giles
Several weeks after Mansour and Rocha’s initial exchange, the 2 joined a second video call, this time with different Kalshi executives together with head of company development Sara Slane and normal counsel Rick Heaslip. Also becoming a member of had been Indian gaming bigwigs together with Jason Giles, govt director of the IGA, which represents tribal gaming pursuits.
The assembly bought off to a pleasant begin, with Rocha and Slane discussing a “bee infestation in Sara’s backyard” and “the significance of trust and transparency in business dealings,” based on notes obtained by The Post.
But the call took an awkward flip, Rocha stated, after Mansour tried to bond over shared “generational burden.” Giles famous the slim trust that the tribes can have with outsiders, lecturing Kalshi execs on historic hardships together with “disease, war and poverty.”
Giles advised the story of his own tribe – the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and its compelled relocation from Alabama and Georgia to Oklahoma, half of the notorious Trail of Tears within the 1800s.
Kalshi was based in 2018 and formally launched trading operations in 2021. REUTERS
Mansour, in flip, shared that he too carries “generational burden” from his upbringing as a Lebanese Christian, based on the assembly notes. Mansour famous that he was born in California and moved to Lebanon for grade faculty during a period through which Christians had been subjected to political repression and threats during a Syrian occupation.
Rocha stated he was unconvinced by Mansour – who returned to the US in 2014 to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Indeed, Rocha stated he discovered the smooth-talking tech wunderkind’s claims to know the historic plight of Native Americans to be distasteful.
“Can you believe that bullshit?” Rocha stated he exclaimed to Giles on the telephone instantly after the call. Rocha stated he added that he “didn’t trust Mansour for a second.”
“It felt very car salesman-esque,” Rocha stated of Mansour’s pitch. “It didn’t feel sincere and it didn’t feel organic. He’s a nice guy, but a terrible liar.”
Giles advised The Post that he additionally noticed warning flags about what Kalshi’s true intentions had been during the call. Mansour, he stated, spoke of the significance of working collectively and of Kalshi’s “desire to partner with large distribution networks to enable trading through their exchange and clearing infrastructure.”
The Pechanga Band of Indians operates one of the most important Indian casinos within the US, in Temecula, Calif. AP
Giles stated he took this to imply that Kalshi aimed to offer wagers on on line casino flooring. Giles stated he was involved that accepting such a proposal may quantity to an endorsement of Kalshi’s unlawful merchandise – a potential Trojan horse that would undercut tribes’ skill to combat Kalshi in court docket down the street.
“There was a lot of doublespeak and euphemisms they were using which raised red flags right away,” Giles advised The Post. “We realized, ‘Oh my gosh, these guys are a huge scam.’”
Giles stated he swiftly started warning tribes about Kalsh. While he didn’t overtly call for lawsuits, he stated he advised tribal leaders: “Send out a cease-and-desist order – tell them to get off your property.”
In the weeks following the second call, Rocha exchanged more and more testy emails with Slane about getting Mansour to look on a recurring webinar he hosts the place company talk about tribal points.
Rocha wrote to Slane that he wished to have Mansour on the show to “educate tribal leaders and regulators about Kalshi’s business model” however stated he could be “taking the gloves off” and that “Kalshi will definitely get dinged.”
When Slane recommended she do the webinar as an alternative of Mansour, Rocha shot back: “That wasn’t the deal.”
Mansour’s testy relationship with Rocha dates back to a fateful March 2025 call through which Mansour provided Rocha an advisory position.
Slane responded: “I am not sure what we gain by going on [the webinar] when it seems the Tribes have already made up their minds.”
Rocha’s response was a curt “See you in court.”
Rocha then took to social media website X to blast Kalshi: “we all should all agree to keep curb stomping Kalshi” with “no mercy.” He referred to Mansour as a “lying little twerp” and a “clown.”
A source close to Kalshi, in the meantime, stated executives had been merely making an attempt to have interaction in constructive discussions with tribal leaders to discover potential partnerships. Kalshi provided the tribes an “olive branch” however Rocha “literally blew a gasket” ending the dialog, the source added.
“If Victor was so offended, why did he keep asking us to join his webinar?” a Kalshi spokeswoman advised The Post.
Over the following handful of months, during the spring and summer time of 2025, tribes – backed by the deep pockets of Indian gaming – sued Kalshi in California, New Mexico and Wisconsin courts.
Kalshi has to this point been capable of skirt state and tribal gaming law by arguing its wagers are financial devices. The tribes declare that Kalshi’s sports activities occasion contracts – customers both take a “yes” or “no” place on a specific final result – are indistinguishable from playing.
Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians and tribal chief of the Pechanga Band of Indians, testified in August earlier than the Senate Indian Affairs Committee concerning the hurt he stated Kalshi was doing to tribes. Facebook/Mark Macarro
Kalshi has known as tribal gaming officers “anything but disenfranchised” they usually have gotten “fat and happy” whereas residing in multi-million greenback estates off reservations, gaming insiders stated.
Rocha’s cousin Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians and tribal chief of the Pechanga Band of Indians – which operates one of the most important Indian Casinos within the US – lives in a roughly $3 million property with a gated entrance in Southern California wine nation.
Meanwhile, Macarro testified in August earlier than the Senate Indian Affairs Committee: “Every dollar diverted to gaming-like prediction markets is a dollar pulled away from tribal jobs, facilities, and community programs.”
This month, the Blue Lake Rancheria and Chicken Ranch Rancheria tribes in California scored a victory in federal court docket with the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that tribes may transfer forward with their go well with partially on grounds that the tribes “demonstrated that Kalshi’s sports events contracts constituted class III gaming activities under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.”
Kathryn Rand, a visiting professor on the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s law faculty who research Indian gaming law, stated: “These judges might be more persuaded by – this quacks like a duck, it looks like a duck, this is obviously a duck, and it ought to be regulated under state law. Period.”
The Chicken Ranch Rancheria tribe in California has sued Kalshi, accusing the company of violating its tribal sovereignty. Google Maps
The legal standoff was difficult earlier this month after the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana stated it was launching a prediction-market app powered by Kalshi. Marshall Pierite, Tunica-Biloxi’s chairman, advised The Post in an interview that he cut up with the tribal institution as a result of he sees alternative, not legal responsibility.
“We know we’re challenging the status quo. Entering this technology era we now have a seat at the table. It was a calculated decision to pave the way for Indian Country,” Pierite stated.
Giles, the IGA govt director, advised The Post that he was blindsided by Tunica-Biloxi’s “disappointing” announcement.
Despite the legal threats, enterprise capitalists have continued to pour money into Kalshi – the company has raised $2.6 billion in complete and has reportedly been in talks for extra financing that would worth it at $40 billion.
Investors stay optimistic that the company can defeat a minimum of some of the fits and that its bet-on-anything business is a novel idea even when regulators parse it back.
Other enterprise capitalists have stated the Trump administration’s assist of prediction markets may imply that by the time a new administration is available in, Kalshi could also be so built-in into financial markets – and on a regular basis life for a lot of Americans – that unwinding it could be deeply unpopular.
