Welcome back to another unmissable posting of Letter From America, led this week, sine qua non, by Missouri, which officially became the 39th state to launch legalised sports betting – making it the only U.S. jurisdiction to go live this year!
Missouri’s Midnight Hour
GeoComply CEO Kip Levin told iGF that the Show Me State’s performance was a reminder of “how quickly consumers embrace a well-regulated market when the option exists – even if it’s midnight”.
And boy-o-boy Missouri bettors wasted little time in getting down to business.
As the clock struck midnight on December 1, sportsbooks opened and eight operators–including DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars and Fanatics Sportsbook–went live.
Within the first seven-days of legal betting, GeoComply recorded a jaw-dropping 18.5 million geolocation checks statewide and more than 520,000 account activations. Figures that reportedly left a few rival states “quietly panicked”.
Of the eight states that border Missouri, only Oklahoma has not legalised sports betting in some form or other.
Until last week, many Missourians crossed the border to bet.
But experts like Adam Hoffer, Director of Excise Tax Policy at the centre-right Tax Foundation, say this pattern could now reverse, as bettors try to avoid higher surcharges in adjacent states like Illinois.
Casinos Up, Sweepstakes Down
Just as the Empire State is about to legalise full-on casino-resorts in The Big Apple, New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has signed Senate Bill 5935A, outlawing sweepstakes.
This makes New York the sixth state–joining California, Connecticut, Montana, New Jersey and Nevada–to render these dual-currency casino sites illegal.
The bill prohibits the operation or promotion of online sweepstakes games by any applicant, licensed entity, connected person or third-party service provider.
Fines range from US$10,000 (£7,500) to US$100,000 (£75,010) and could result in the loss of a gaming licence.
Several sweepstakes operators made rapid exits the same day Hochul signed, while others, such as VGW–who are behind Chumba Casino and LuckyLand Slots–bailed back in August when talks first got serious.
And last week anti-sweepstakes bills were also introduced in Maine and Indiana, leaving some experts to suggest these clampdowns could lay the groundwork for future online casino reform.
Florida Reforms
Florida lawmakers are also seeking to shore-up regulatory loopholes.
House Bill 591, filed on December 2, proposes a sweeping overhaul of the state’s gambling laws.
Alongside defining terms such as internet gambling for the first time–expressly prohibiting it outside any agreed Tribal Compacts–, the bill rewrites the rules of the Florida Gaming Control Commission, bans “the trafficking of slot machines”, and introduces misdemeanour penalties for players, as well as a sliding scale of felony penalties for operators and suppliers.
Will it pass?
Unlikely.
A similar, though less ambitious, proposal–SB 204–has yet to clear the committee stage. And other efforts to update betting legislation, including a sweepstakes ban, stalled in 2025.
Surging
Mainstream sports betting revenue appears unaffected by the looming threat of prediction markets – if New York’s performance is an indicator.
Setting a new monthly record for November, online gambling revenues in the Empire State surged to US$280.6 million (£210.5m) on a handle of US$2.61 billion (£1.96bn), up 12 percent on the previous record of US$248.9 million (£186.7m), set in May this year, and an impressive 21 percent increase year-on-year.
FanDuel led the charge, followed by DraftKings and Fanatics in third place.
Kalshi’s Class Action
Things are heating up for Kalshi as civil actions join the deluge of legal cases filed against the prediction market.
A new class action, filed last week in the Southern District of New York, is one of the biggest legal challenges to date.
Civilian plaintiffs from six states allege Kalshi has been operating an unlicensed online sports-betting platform, breaching consumer-protection laws and misleading users.
The suit seeks restitution for losses. It claims users believed they were betting against each other; but, in reality, they were effectively betting against Kalshi.
Kalshi has called the suit “meritless fiction” and maintains no wrongdoing under its federal certification.
The company’s Co-Founder, Luana Lopes Lara, even broke her characteristic silence, taking to X, calling the suit an attempt by “entrenched interests [to seed] false narratives to discredit prediction markets”.
Louisiana and Connecticut Pile In
And it’s not just U.S. citizens tightening the thumbscrews this week.
State authorities in Louisiana and Connecticut have also taken action to prevent prediction markets from operating within their borders.
In Louisiana, the Gaming Control Board sent warning letters to all licence-holders, stating: “Any direct or indirect involvement in the operation, offering, or facilitation of sporting event contracts may affect a regulated party’s suitability for licensure.”
Meantime in Connecticut, the state’s Department of Consumer Protection (DCP) issued cease-and-desist letters to Kalshi, Robinhood and Crypto.com for “conducting illegal online gambling”.
Kalshi, never one to let a cease-and-desist ruin its day, filed a federal case against Connecticut hours later, arguing–as in other states–that the platform is federally-regulated and entitled to operate nationwide, irrespective of state laws.
And guess what?
On December 8, Connecticut Federal Court Judge Vernon Oliver sided with Kalshi, saying the DCP must “refrain from taking enforcement action against Kalshi”, as the court considers the case.
Popcorn anyone as we watch the now-20 ongoing lawsuits against prediction market sites in the U.S?
