CFTC approves box-office futures exchange —but might not approve its markets.

Today, the CFTC approved Media Derivatives Inc.’s request to create a futures exchange based on box office receipts.  The exchange “is primarily focused on the development of a variety of products to benefit the entertainment industry with one if its initially proposed products being designed to help mitigate risk and enhance the successful financing of motion pictures through trading of opening weekend domestic box office receipts.”

See also reports at Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.

Media Derivatives’s Trend Exchange market is one of two similar proposals that have been submitted to the CFTC for approval.  The other proposal has been submitted by Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment and brokerage company, which acquired play-money site Hollywood Stock Exchange a few years ago.

[Cross posted from Knowledge Problem.]

EDITOR’S ADDENDUM: Variety + Reuters + AP.

“At this point in time, I have not heard any arguments to persuade me that ‘movie futures’ generally can overcome some fundamental design flaws,” said CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton.

Next: Why the CFTC won’t approve the Cantor Exchange and the Trend Exchange’s prediction markets on movie box office