Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection has issued cease-and-desist orders to nine prediction-market platforms, telling Polymarket, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Robinhood, ProphetX, Novig, Webull, Gemini and Underdog Predict to stop offering sports-related event contracts to state residents. The orders, announced by Gov. Ned Lamont and DCP Commissioner Bryan T. Cafferelli, require the platforms to halt marketing and promotion of the contracts and to let Connecticut customers withdraw existing funds.
Connecticut’s position is unambiguous: a contract letting a customer take a position on a game or sports outcome is a sports wager, regardless of whether it is dressed up as a financial-style “yes” or “no” market. The DCP says the nine platforms operate outside the state’s authorized sports-betting structure, which runs exclusively through DraftKings at Foxwoods, FanDuel at Mohegan Sun, and Fanatics in partnership with the Connecticut Lottery. Regulators argue the platforms fail to meet licensing and consumer-protection standards required of those operators.
Underage Access and Self-Exclusion Concerns
The orders reportedly allege that some platforms allowed access to underage users and solicited residents on Connecticut’s voluntary self-exclusion list, a roster of roughly 10,000 names of people who have removed their own eligibility to wager. Connecticut’s licensed-market framework mandates a minimum betting age of 21, responsible-gambling tools, advertising limits near self-excluded individuals and college campuses, cybersecurity and data standards, and restrictions on certain markets involving Connecticut college teams. State officials say sports event contracts create betting-like risk without any of those controls.
Operators that ignore the orders could face civil penalties under Connecticut’s unfair trade practices law and possible criminal exposure under state gaming statutes. Alongside the nine orders, the DCP issued nearly 30 subpoenas to gaming-service-provider licensees, media companies and other parties that may have information on how the contracts reach Connecticut consumers; none of the subpoena recipients were named as enforcement targets.
Part of a Longer Fight
This is not Connecticut’s first move against the sector. The DCP sent cease-and-desist orders to Kalshi, Robinhood Derivatives and Crypto.com in December 2025, then sued Kalshi to block its sports contracts outright. A federal judge denied Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction, and the company has appealed, continuing to argue its contracts are federally regulated swaps under CFTC oversight rather than state-governed wagers – a dispute examined in more depth in GIN’s coverage of the Kalshi litigation.
According to CT Insider, Novig, ProphetX, Gemini and Webull have responded to last week’s orders and are discussing possible service changes with Cafferelli, while Polymarket, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Robinhood and Underdog Predict had not responded as of that report. Underdog’s situation echoes fights playing out elsewhere, detailed in GIN’s report on Underdog’s multi-state legal challenges. The underlying question – whether federal derivatives law preempts state gambling authority – remains for courts, regulators or Congress to settle, a debate outlined further in GIN’s explainer on the prediction-markets preemption fight.
Source: Sports Handle
Petra Vanhoof has spent the better part of a decade following the shifting tides of gambling regulation across Europe and beyond. She came up through the compliance side of the industry before pivoting to writing, which gives her a grounded, no-nonsense perspective on the rules, loopholes, and political maneuvering that shape how operators actually do business. She is particularly drawn to the gap between what regulators say and what the market ends up doing in response.