Connecticut ordered nine prediction-market platforms to stop offering sports event contracts to residents and to let users withdraw their funds, as Governor Ned Lamont and the Department of Consumer Protection stepped up an enforcement campaign against what the state calls unlicensed sports betting. The department said failure to comply could trigger civil penalties under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act or criminal penalties under state gaming laws.
The platforms named were Polymarket, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Robinhood, ProphetX, Novig, Webull, Gemini and Underdog Predict. Officials said they must stop advertising, offering, promoting or otherwise making sports event contracts and other forms of unlicensed online gambling available in Connecticut.
The same push brought 29 subpoenas, described by the governor’s office as nearly 30, to businesses and organizations that may have information relevant to the investigation. The state said the recipients are not under investigation, and named media outlets and services including ESPN, The Hartford Courant, NBC Connecticut, WFSB, Apple App Store, Google Play, Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Stripe.
The state says the products fall outside Connecticut’s consumer-protection and gaming rules. Officials said the markets take bets from people who are barred from wagering, including those under 21 and people on the state’s voluntary self-exclusion list, and that they offer bets on Connecticut college sports, which state law prohibits except when a team participates in an intercollegiate tournament. Connecticut also licenses DraftKings through Foxwoods, FanDuel through Mohegan Sun and Fanatics through the Connecticut Lottery, and sports bettors must be at least 21.
As reported in August, Connecticut had already sued Kalshi over sports event contracts. In that case, the state said the contracts amount to sports betting, while Kalshi said they are federally regulated swaps and appealed a federal judge’s ruling to the Second Circuit. Lamont has said the 2021 legalization of sports wagering was meant to create a safe, regulated market, not a free-for-all.
The state has also pointed to the scale of the market it is trying to police. It cited an American Gaming Association estimate that $40 billion will be wagered on the NFL through prediction markets this year, and said one operator recorded almost $250 million in college-football trading volume on the first day of the 2026 season. The crackdown comes after Connecticut advanced House Bill 5229 and Senate Bill 296 in May, bills covering gambling advertising, college sports, match-fixing, insider betting and prediction markets’ impact on the regulated sector.
