Michigan regulator quits NCPG over Kalshi partnership
A Michigan regulator resigned from the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) to protest the nonprofit's partnership with prediction market operator Kalshi. The state contends Kalshi runs an unauthorized sports betting platform in Michigan, where a temporary restraining order is already blocking its sports event contracts. The regulator identified as Williams cited the partnership as incompatible with state gambling oversight, making the MGCB departure a rare public rift between traditional gaming authorities and a federally regulated exchange.
The NCPG split forces every state gaming regulator to choose sides: align with the established nonprofit framework or boycott it once it admits CFTC-registered prediction markets as partners. Kalshi, the loss of NCPG credibility in Michigan compounds its legal isolation there, stripping away a Gaming stamp it may need to show other state courts. Polymarket faces the same vulnerability if its own state fights escalate; no platform can afford to have both local judges and local problem-gambling allies against it.
The MGCB exit signals that state gambling agencies are treating CFTC registration as irrelevant to their consumer-protection missions, a stance that emboldens the attorneys general already suing Kalshi in five other states to keep pressing gambling-law theories. Meanwhile, the Schiff-Curtis bill advancing in Congress would ban sports event contracts on CFTC-regulated markets entirely, leaving Kalshi and Polymarket exposed from federal and state directions at once.
The NCPG split is the latest front in a multi-state regulatory assault on Kalshi that now spans Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Massachusetts, even as a Senate bill threatens to erase the federal permission Kalshi and Polymarket are fighting to preserve.