Utah’s anti-gambling tradition takes on Kalshi and Polymarket

Kalshi has already sued the state, and the company is backed by the federal agency responsible for regulating financial markets. For more than a century, Utah has kept gambling almost entirely out of the state. There are no casinos, no lotteries and no racetracks that allow bets, a prohibition rooted in the conservative ideals of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which views gambling as a vice that leads to selfishness and addiction.But now, the state is fighting a new, more challenging battle to keep gambling outside its borders. It’s on the verge of enacting a law intended to undercut prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, which allow anyone with a smartphone to wager on anything from whether it will rain in Los Angeles to whether the United States will go to war.While regulators and other states are still debating whether those markets constitute finance or gambling, Utah has already made up its mind.“We are putting a casino in the pocket of every single American, and they are targeting especially young people,” said Gov. Spencer Cox. “It is really awful what they are doing, and we are going to make sure this doesn’t happen in our state.”Cox said he will sign the legislation, putting conservative Utah at odds with the federal government. Kalshi has already sued the state, and the company is backed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency responsible for regulating financial markets.The conflict puts Utah, a place that’s not known for picking fights, on the frontlines of a cultural, political and economic battle sweeping the country. On one side is a state deeply rooted in what is widely known as the Mormon church, where both politicians and faith leaders have treated the issue as a moral crusade. On the other is a growing industry — Kalshi and Polymarket are estimated to be worth $20 billion each after their last fundraising rounds — with connections in Washington that may offer some regulatory protection.President Donald Trump‘s eldest son is an adviser for both Kalshi and Polymarket and an investor in the latter. Trump’s social media platform Truth Social is also launching its own cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict.Whoever wins this round could shape how other states handle the issue in the future.“What’s at stake here is whether states will be able to regulate gambling or if gambling is going to be subsumed into finance and ultimately regulated by Congress,” said Todd Phillips, a professor at Georgia State University who has written extensively about prediction market regulation.