FanDuel Predicts and DraftKings halt Utah event contracts after Kalshi felony charges
FanDuel Predicts will remove sports, politics, and other event contracts from Utah starting Friday at 10 a.m. ET. DraftKings took similar action in the state. The moves follow felony charges brought against Kalshi co-founders Mansour and Lopes Lara in Utah this week. Neither operator cited a specific regulatory order as the trigger for its suspension. The dual halt marks the first known instance of major prediction-market platforms voluntarily withdrawing event contracts from a state.
The felony charges against Kalshi's founders have rewritten the risk calculation for every operator with event contracts in Utah. DraftKings and FanDuel Predicts pulled products before any state demand landed, suggesting the personal criminal threat now outweighs the revenue from a single state. Other platforms must decide whether to wait for a Utah cease-and-desist or pre-emptively exit and cede the market.
The self-removal strategy may become the template for operators in states with aggressive attorneys general, especially where felony statutes already exist. For Kalshi, the competitive pain is doubled: rivals vanish from Utah but its own criminal case proceeds regardless, pinning the platform to a fight it cannot settle by leaving.
Joins DraftKings in exiting Utah event contracts while Kalshi remains trapped in Utah's felony prosecution of its founders, alongside the state's parallel $61.2 million civil suit and the CFTC-DOJ preemption case.