Missouri Gives Kalshi, 5 Prediction Markets 30 Days

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway sent cease-and-desist letters to six prediction-market operators on September 16 and 17, 2026: Kalshi, Polymarket, Crypto.com, Novig, Underdog and Robinhood. Each has thirty days from the date of its own letter to get a Missouri Gaming Commission licence or stop offering sports event contracts in the state. No sweepstakes casino received one.

"Companies cannot repackage sports bets as 'event contracts' to avoid Missouri law," Hanaway said in the announcement, which her office published on September 18.

We downloaded all six letters from the attorney general's own server and read them in full, which is the only way to see what the press release leaves out: the letters are not identical, they went out on two different days, the case law they cite is not the same in every letter, and five of the six carry an allegation about under-21 access that the sixth does not. That is how we check everything we publish.

What exactly did Missouri demand, and by when?

Four of the six letters open identically. The operator "is an online sports wagering platform offering sports wagering to individuals located in the State of Missouri, despite not submitting to regulation by the Missouri Gaming Commission as required by Missouri law." Each then gives two options:

1. Cease and desist from offering sports wagering in Missouri, or
2. (a) obtain a licence from the Missouri Gaming Commission, (b) pay all associated state taxes and fees, and (c) stop offering sports wagering to anyone in Missouri under 21.

The Novig letter is the exception, and it is the one worth reading closely. Its demand has no lettered sub-parts and only two components, to "obtain a license from the Missouri Gaming Commission and pay all associated state taxes and fees". There is no age condition anywhere in it.

The deadline is a request rather than an order to stop trading immediately. Every letter closes with the same sentence: "We ask that you confirm [the operator's] compliance with Missouri law or its cessation of sports wagering activities in the State of Missouri within thirty days of the date of this letter."

That matters because the letters were not all dated the same day.

The money argument is set out in the same terms in each letter. Missouri imposes a 10% wagering tax on "the adjusted gross revenue" from in-state sports wagering under Mo. Const. art. III, section 39(g)10.a, and requires an initial licence fee plus a renewal every five years, "each of which could be as much as $500,000", under section 39(g)6. Those sums are appropriated to elementary, secondary and higher education and to a Compulsive Gaming Prevention Fund. The letters say each operator "has kept all of that money for itself and disregarded its obligation to pay a portion to the State."

Why does the age-21 allegation only appear in five letters?

This is the part the press release compresses and the documents make precise. Missouri's rules impose what the letters call an "affirmative duty" on online sports wagering platforms to "actively prevent the placement of a wager by individuals under twenty-one (21) years of age", citing 11 C.S.R. section 45-20.360(1)(A) and (6). Five letters then quote the operator's own paperwork back at it:

• Kalshi's Member Agreement permits anyone who is "the age of majority in [their] state of residence", which in Missouri is 18.
• Polymarket's US Rulebook permits anyone at least 18 who has "attained the age of majority in their state and/or country of residence".
• Crypto.com's U.S. Exchange Terms and Conditions permit anyone "at least eighteen (18) years of age".
• Robinhood's Customer Agreement permits anyone at least 18 and of "legal age under the laws of the jurisdiction where [that person] reside[s]".
• Underdog's letter says its "website reflects that it permits anyone in Missouri who is at least 18 years of age to place wagers".

Novig's letter contains no under-21 paragraph at all, and no age condition in its demand either. The Novig and Underdog letters are also the two that rest on a thinner evidentiary base: both say the operator is serving Missouri "according to its website", with a footnote to a specific page on the operator's own site, where the other four letters simply assert it. Novig's footnote points at a Novig blog post listing the states where you can play; Underdog's points at a numbered anchor inside its help-centre state-eligibility article.

Does this touch sweepstakes casinos in Missouri?

Not directly, and that is the useful finding. We read all six letters and none of them mentions sweepstakes casinos, Sweeps Coins, dual-currency play or any operator we rank. The subject throughout is sports event contracts and the constitutional sports-wagering framework Missouri voters approved as Amendment 2 in 2024, with the regulated market opening December 1, 2025. Where Missouri stands on the sweepstakes model itself is on our Missouri state page, and the doctrine those sites rely on is set out in our guide to whether sweepstakes casinos are legal.

One of the six is closer to this beat than the rest, though. Novig ran a dual-currency sweepstakes product until it retired Novig Cash and Novig Coins in a relaunch on August 4, 2026 and moved to real-money trading. Missouri's letter does not mention any of that, and it is the operator's post-sweeps exchange that the attorney general is objecting to, but it is a reminder of how short the distance is between the two models in practice: the same company, the same app, different currency.

The reasoning, though, is the same reasoning that has been used against sweeps operators in other states: you are running unlicensed online gambling, the label on the product does not change that, and the state regulator is the one who decides. It is the argument Illinois used when it sent cease-and-desist letters to sweeps casinos, and it is why a state with no ban statute can still be a hostile place to play. Missouri is also not the first state to put this to these same companies in writing: Connecticut ordered nine prediction markets out on September 10, Polymarket, Robinhood and Novig among them.

The letters also lean on a string of federal decisions, cited by name and reporter, and the string is not the same length in every letter. Five of the six cite eight cases: KalshiEx, LLC v. Assad (9th Cir., Aug. 28, 2026), Schuler (6th Cir., Apr. 24, 2026), Bird (S.D. Iowa, Sept. 8, 2026), Cafferelli (D. Conn., Aug. 10, 2026), Cox (D. Utah, Aug. 4, 2026), Williams (S.D.N.Y., July 13, 2026), N. Am. Derivatives Exch. v. Nevada (D. Nev. 2025) and Martin (D. Md., 2025). Kalshi's own letter cites seven of those eight and leaves out the Nevada district-court case, the only one on the list that Kalshi was not itself the plaintiff in. Two of the eight have their own coverage here: Bird is the September 8 Iowa ruling that sports event contracts are not swaps, and Cafferelli is the August 10 Connecticut decision that a CFTC licence does not displace state gambling law.

Two of those jurisdictions run the other way in our own coverage: Connecticut is where Underdog turned round and sued the attorney general, and the Ninth Circuit's August Assad ruling, which we read in full when it landed, is the one Kalshi is now asking to have reheard. That pending rehearing petition is exactly what let Montana agree to stand down on September 17, the same day Missouri's second pair of letters went out.

What should a Missouri player do now?

Nothing has been shut off. These are demand letters, not an injunction, and no court has ordered any of the six to stop. None of the operators had responded publicly on the attorney general's page at the time of writing, and we found no operator statement to report, so there is no other side of this to give you yet.

If you hold a balance on any of the six, the practical point is the thirty-day clock. An operator that chooses option one leaves the state, and leaving a state is when balances get awkward. Robinhood is already living that somewhere else: a federal court order gives its Michigan customers until October 9 to close open sports event contracts. On the sweeps side we have timed those windows, and they have run from 14 to 57 days to cash out after a state ban. The habits that protect you are the same either way: finish identity verification before you need it, and do not sit on a redeemable balance in a state where the regulator is writing letters. Our guide to redeeming Sweeps Coins covers the mechanics on the sweeps side, and the brands whose payouts we have actually timed are on our fastest-payout list.

Sources & documents

• Missouri Attorney General, "Hanaway Orders Unlicensed Prediction Markets To Cease And Desist Unlawful Sports Wagering" - the announcement, dated September 18, 2026 on the office's press-release index, and the source of the Hanaway quotation and the six names
• Cease-and-desist letter to KalshiEX LLC - 3 pages, dated September 16, 2026; the source of the two-options framing, the thirty-day request, the constitutional citations and the shorter seven-case string
• Cease-and-desist letter to QCX Limited Liability Company (Polymarket) - dated September 16, 2026
• Cease-and-desist letter to Foris DAX, Inc. (Crypto.com) - dated September 16, 2026
• Cease-and-desist letter to Robinhood Derivatives, LLC - dated September 16, 2026
• Cease-and-desist letter to Ludlow Exchange, LLC (Novig) - dated September 17, 2026; the one letter with no under-21 paragraph and no age condition in its demand, and one of the five citing all eight cases
• Cease-and-desist letter to Underdog Sports Wagering, LLC - dated September 17, 2026
• Missouri Attorney General press-release index - read September 19, 2026, where the announcement carries the September 18, 2026 date

These are allegations in demand letters from a state attorney general. None has been tested in court, none of the six operators has been found to have violated Missouri law, and we found no response from any of them to report.

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