A Michigan court has temporarily barred Kalshi from offering sports event contracts to residents of the state, with the restriction lasting 14 days and set to expire on July 13. A court filing submitted Monday shows that Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina granted a temporary restraining order directing the company to halt the products in Michigan.
The ruling also requires Kalshi to follow geolocation rules. If the company fails to comply, it could face a $120,000 per day penalty. In the order, Aquilina wrote that Michigan residents would face irreparable harm from being “exploited by Kalshi’s sports betting operation masquerading as an investment opportunity.”
State lawsuit pushed the dispute back into Michigan court
The order follows a lawsuit filed in March by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. The complaint argued that Kalshi’s sports event contracts violate the state’s Lawful Sports Betting Act because they function as unlicensed gambling products. Earlier this month, a federal court rejected Kalshi’s effort to shift the case into federal jurisdiction and sent the matter back to Michigan state court.
Michigan is now the second state, after Nevada, to win a court-ordered restriction on Kalshi’s sports event contracts. On June 17, Kentucky also sued Kalshi, Polymarket, and several other prediction market platforms, alleging that they were running unlicensed sports betting businesses.
State and federal authorities remain at odds
More than a dozen U.S. states have taken enforcement action against prediction market operators. At the same time, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has challenged some of those state moves, arguing that federally regulated event contracts fall under its exclusive authority rather than state gambling law.
On June 25, Kalshi filed a separate federal lawsuit against an Illinois law that would require prediction market platforms offering sports event contracts to obtain state licenses. In that filing, the company said the Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC sole authority over its contracts and does not allow individual states to impose separate licensing demands.
Kalshi has also argued in court papers that state-by-state restrictions would force it to build expensive geofencing systems. The company said that could clash with its obligation to operate a uniform national market under federal regulation.
World Cup trading volume keeps climbing
Legal pressure has not slowed sports-related prediction trading during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Data from Dune shows Polymarket’s daily taker volume hit a record $713 million on June 20. That measure tracks contracts bought or sold by traders who fill existing orders. The tournament began on June 11, putting the volume peak a little over a week into the event.
At the same time, Defirate data shows monthly sports prediction volume rose 40% to $9.5 billion on Kalshi and 175% to $5.3 billion on Polymarket, making sports the largest category on both platforms during the tournament. In a report dated June 11, Bernstein estimated that the 2026 FIFA World Cup could generate more than $3 billion in additional sports betting handle and between $5 billion and $10 billion in new consumer prediction market volume.
Platform data also shows that Polymarket’s World Cup winner contract has produced more than $3.5 billion in trading volume. Activity in prediction markets has kept rising even as the legal fight around these platforms widens.