Tennessee’s sports betting regulator has ordered prediction market platforms to stop offering sports-related wagers—in the latest move by state governments to try to seize control of the exploding, legally ambiguous industry.
The Tennessee Sports Wagering Council sent cease-and-desist letters to Polymarket, Kalshi and Crypto.com on Friday, ordering the companies to immediately pull any sports-related markets accessible to Tennessee customers. The companies were also ordered to refund any pending sports-related wagers to customers by the end of the month.
The companies are unlikely to comply. For months, they have insisted that the billions of dollars' worth of sports-related markets they collectively operate constitute federally regulated events contracts, not state-regulated sports betting.
Representatives for the three companies did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s requests for comment.
Tennessee’s action against the prediction markets on Friday noted how the companies have failed to institute basic standards required of gambling platforms in the state—including requiring all participants to be over the age of 21, providing self-exclusion lists for gambling addicts, and instituting limits on betting amounts and time spent betting.
