Ohio lawmakers propose bills to ban election betting and tax sports event contracts
Ohio lawmakers have introduced two bills that would ban election betting and classify sports event contracts as regulated, taxable sports gambling. The legislation targets prediction market platforms including Robinhood, Kalshi, and Polymarket. The bills would bring event contracts under existing state gambling frameworks rather than federal commodity regulation. The state has already stripped Kalshi's federal preemption shield in prior litigation.
Ohio's bills add a legislative front to its courtroom victory against Kalshi, giving other state attorneys general a second template beyond pure litigation. The tax framework would force Robinhood and Polymarket to choose between absorbing new state levies or building geofenced exclusion zones, either option raising the cost of national scale.
Tennessee and Utah have already copied Ohio's gambling framing, and Maryland officials are flagging the Fourth Circuit's upcoming KalshiEx decision as the next precedent to follow. The NFL has backed state gambling framing at the Supreme Court, sharpening the commercial pressure on platforms caught between federal registration and state rejection. Every new state that layers taxes onto litigation deepens the fragmenting of what was sold as a nationally accessible market.