The post Tennessee Demands Polymarket, Kalshi and Crypto.com End Sports Prediction Markets appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

In brief Tennessee ordered Polymarket, Kalshi, and Crypto.com to shut down sports prediction markets and refund wagers. The companies have previously said that states lack authority to do so, claiming the markets are federally regulated. The escalating legal clash is poised to eventually head to the Supreme Court. 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.  On Friday, in fact, Kalshi sued Tennessee’s attorney general and its sports betting regulator in federal court, arguing that the state had no legal standing to regulate the company or compel it to stop serving in-state customers. On Monday, the prediction market filed an additional motion for a preliminary injunction and an emergency hearing, in an effort to have a federal judge weigh in immediately. Other states have made similar moves to try to ban sports-related prediction markets, to no avail. Illinois, Connecticut, Michigan, and Illinois all moved to ban top companies from offering sports prediction markets without complying with state-level gambling regulations, but the companies—Polymarket, Kalshi, and Crypto.com—have all continued to do so. Representatives for the three companies did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s requests for comment. The economic calculus of the prediction market industry’s defiance of state-level bans makes…

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Filed under: News - @ January 12, 2026 10:22 pm