Ohio orders ten prediction platforms out — Coinbase, Polymarket and Robinhood get 14 days

One week after the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ohio could enforce its gambling laws against Kalshi, the Ohio Casino Control Commission moved to empty the state's prediction-market sector entirely. Letters went out Friday to ten platforms — Coinbase, Gemini Titan, MooMoo Financial, Novig Betting, Plus500US, Polymarket, ProphetX, Robinhood Derivatives, Underdog Predict and Webull Financial — each with a fourteen-day deadline to cease offering sports event contracts to Ohio residents.

The letter text, published by InGame, is blunt: 'the Commission demands that [the platform] cease and desist from offering, participating in offering, or facilitating those who offer sports event contracts in Ohio.' It covers soliciting Ohioans, accepting orders on sports contracts listed on federally regulated exchanges, and operating a futures commission merchant or designated contract market serving the state. Kalshi needed no letter — it already sued Ohio and lost.

From court ruling to enforcement wave

The Ohio letters are the first mass enforcement action directly enabled by the circuit split the industry has been warning about. The Sixth Circuit's late-September decision held that Kalshi had not shown its sports contracts were 'swaps' under the Commodity Exchange Act — and that even if they were, federal law did not clearly preempt state gambling enforcement. That reasoning handed state regulators a template, and Ohio used it within days.

• Ten platforms received identical letters: Coinbase, Gemini Titan, MooMoo, Novig, Plus500US, Polymarket, ProphetX, Robinhood Derivatives, Underdog Predict, Webull.
• Each has 14 days to confirm in writing that it has stopped offering sports event contracts to Ohio residents.
• The commission says it will pursue 'all legal remedies and actions' against companies that do not comply.
• If the bans hold, Ohio joins Michigan, Nevada and Washington as states that have effectively excluded sports event contracts.

What this means for the patchwork

The significance isn't the letters — it's the speed. Regulators in multiple states now have an appellate decision saying their gambling laws can reach federally registered exchanges, and a working example of what to send platforms afterward. For operators, the compliance map just got harder: federal registration was supposed to be a shield, and in the Sixth Circuit's footprint it demonstrably is not.

Ohio's move follows the same logic Nevada used in its earlier enforcement wave and builds on the circuit split traced in the Kalshi Sixth Circuit case — with Minnesota's ban already showing what a full exclusion looks like.