DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics have begun withdrawing their prediction market products from Utah, days after the state’s attorney general filed criminal charges against Kalshi and its two co-founders. The three sportsbook operators are the first major US betting brands to retreat from a state over the event contracts fight, while Kalshi and Polymarket have kept their markets live.

DraftKings Predictions removed sports, politics and novelty contracts for Utah customers late on Wednesday 28 October. FanDuel Predicts followed at 10am ET on Friday 30 October, and Fanatics Markets said it will stop accepting trades in the state on Wednesday 4 November. The moves were first reported by Legal Sports Report and SBC Americas.

Different scopes of withdrawal

The three exits are not identical. DraftKings said that “effective immediately, sports, novelty, political, and certain other event contracts are no longer available”, but Utah users can still trade financial contracts tied to stocks, commodities and crypto prices. FanDuel said “event contracts on sports, politics, and novelties will no longer be available to customers in Utah”, leaving economic benchmark and financial indicator markets in place. Both companies said existing positions will remain open and settle as normal.

Fanatics is going further and ending every event contract it offers in the state. “Due to recent developments, we are stopping trade placement on Fanatics Markets in the state of Utah on November 4,” a spokesperson said.

The timing matters for the operators’ wider prediction market strategies. All three launched event contract products this year as a way to reach customers in states without legal sports betting, and Utah was one of the clearest examples of that strategy: a state where no form of sports wagering is permitted under state law.

Underdog still listed Utah as an available region for its prediction markets as of Friday and did not respond to requests for comment, according to Legal Sports Report.

Criminal case against Kalshi

The retreat follows Utah Attorney General Derek Brown’s decision last week to file criminal charges against Kalshi and co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara. The 14 counts include a second-degree felony charge of pattern of unlawful activity for each founder and 12 third-degree felony counts of online gambling promotion. The charges are allegations and have not been tested in court.

According to the state, an undercover investigator opened a Kalshi account from a Utah IP address and placed 12 sports event contract trades between 13 and 26 September in Salt Lake and Davis counties, with each trade generating a fee.

“Gambling is illegal in Utah, whether you place the bet, run the game, or promote it,” Brown said. Kalshi called the charges “a crazy overreach” and said “Utah is clearly playing politics”.

The criminal case came on top of the state’s civil action, in which Utah sued Kalshi in state court as a public nuisance. Utah is one of only two US states with no legal form of gambling.

Federal pushback

The dispute is also being fought at federal level. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice have sued Utah to block its crackdown, arguing that event contracts listed on CFTC-regulated exchanges fall under exclusive federal jurisdiction. Kalshi has taken its own preemption argument to the Tenth Circuit after losing at district court level.

For the licensed sportsbook groups, the calculation is different from that of the prediction-market-only platforms. DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics hold state gaming licences across dozens of US jurisdictions and have more to lose from a criminal confrontation with a state attorney general than Kalshi or Polymarket, whose businesses rest almost entirely on the federal preemption argument.

The withdrawals give Utah an early practical win while the federal cases proceed, and other states weighing enforcement against prediction markets are likely to take note of how quickly the regulated operators stepped back.

Veikkaus, Finland’s state-owned gambling company, will launch a new consumer brand called Viabet in both Finland and Denmark on 1 July 2027, marking its first direct-to-consumer venture outside its home market.

The brand is being built in partnership with streaming and sports broadcaster Viaplay Group. Viabet will be developed, owned and operated by Veikkaus, which will run it through its international arm, while Viaplay will supply selected media content, according to reports by Finnish public broadcaster Yle and the trade press.

“Viabet is a significant strategic step for Veikkaus,” president and chief executive Olli Sarekoski said, as reported by Yle.

Timed to the end of the monopoly

The launch date is no coincidence. On 1 July 2027 Finland opens its online gambling market to licensed competitors, ending the exclusive position Veikkaus has held for decades. The company will keep its own Veikkaus-branded products, but Viabet gives it a second, media-led brand to compete with international operators arriving in the market.

Those rivals are already lining up. Wildz Group said earlier this month that it was the first company to win a Finnish online gambling licence, and ComeOn and SuomiVeto have since joined the first group of licensed operators. Supplier deals are also being signed, with sportsbook providers announcing partnerships timed for the July 2027 opening.

The Finnish reform splits the old monopoly in two. Online casino and betting will be open to licensed private operators, while Veikkaus keeps exclusive rights over lotteries and land-based slot machines. Licensed operators will pay a gaming tax on their Finnish revenue and face marketing rules overseen by the new licensing authority, so Viabet will compete on the same terms as the international brands.

Until now, Veikkaus’s activity outside Finland has been concentrated in its B2B subsidiary Fennica Gaming. Viabet is the first time it will face customers directly in another regulated market.

Why Denmark

Denmark is a natural first target. Viaplay has a large sports audience there and holds key football rights: in April it said it had extended its men’s Champions League rights in Denmark for four years from autumn 2027 to 2031. A betting brand that can sit alongside that content gives Veikkaus a route to customers without building awareness from scratch.

The Danish market, regulated by Spillemyndigheden, is also mature and competitive, with a long list of licensed international operators. Neither company has said whether Veikkaus has applied for a Danish licence, which it will need before Viabet can take bets there.

Advertising rules in flux

The timing brings a regulatory complication. The Danish government has tabled a bill that would introduce a whistle-to-whistle gambling advertising ban and new curbs on affiliates. The proposed restrictions are due to apply from 1 July 2027, subject to parliamentary approval, the same day Viabet is meant to go live.

A tighter advertising regime around live sport could limit how far a broadcaster-linked brand can use match coverage to promote betting, which is a large part of the logic of a media partnership. How the final Danish rules treat sponsorship and in-programme promotion will matter for Viabet’s launch plans.

A hedge abroad

For Veikkaus, which is losing its online monopoly at home, finding revenue in a neighbouring regulated market is a hedge against the market share it is likely to cede to new Finnish licensees.

The deal will also be watched by other broadcasters weighing whether to move from selling betting advertising to holding a stake in a betting brand. Further details on Viabet’s product range and supplier line-up are expected closer to launch.

Kalshi has raised $1bn in a Series G round that values the prediction market operator at $40bn, the company said on 29 October, as two US senators demanded to know how it and rival Polymarket are policing election trading days before the midterms.

The round was co-led by Wellington and Sequoia, with Baillie Gifford, Stripes, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Layer Global, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Sequoia Global Equities, CapitalG, Hudson River Trading and Balyasny Asset Management also taking part, according to Kalshi’s own announcement. The valuation is up from $22bn earlier this year and makes Kalshi one of the most valuable private companies in the wider betting and trading space.

Beyond event contracts

Kalshi said the money will go towards growing the exchange, building new asset classes and widening international access, with Latin America and Europe named as priorities. It also plans to invest in institutional sales, distribution and product development, and to launch indices, single-stock perpetual futures and compute markets. The index work builds on a recently announced partnership with S&P Dow Jones Indices.

The company used the announcement to set out how far it has moved from its roots in event contracts. It said annualised trading volume across prediction markets, commodities, crypto and perpetual futures has passed $1tn, that more than 30 million accounts have been created, and that it now handles more than 75% of prediction market trading volume. Non-sports annualised revenue has passed $1bn, it said.

Perpetual futures, launched only a few months ago, have generated $83bn in trading volume across more than 500,000 traders, while international retail trading is approaching $100m in annualised fees one year after Kalshi opened in more than 140 countries. Around 500 institutional entities were active on the exchange in September and, excluding market makers, accounted for roughly a quarter of volume. Distribution partners include Interactive Brokers, Public.com, Plus500, Wealthsimple, PayPal and Block.

Senators question election safeguards

The raise landed on the same day that Senators Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and John Curtis, a Utah Republican, wrote to Kalshi chief executive Tarek Mansour and Polymarket chief executive Shayne Coplan about insider trading and manipulation in election markets.

According to the committee’s minority press release, the senators pointed to cases in 2025 and April 2026 in which candidates bet on their own races on Kalshi, and to alleged manipulation tactics on Polymarket during the 2024 presidential election. They asked how many suspected violations were stopped before trades were placed rather than found afterwards, what election-related insider trading has been referred to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and what safeguards are in place. They requested answers by Election Day on 3 November.

A Kalshi enforcement official said, as reported by The Hill and Bloomberg Law, that the company prohibits insider trading and market manipulation and proactively blocks candidates and campaign staff from trading. Polymarket announced election-specific surveillance measures on 27 October, two days before the letter.

State fights continue

The funding does nothing to ease Kalshi’s legal battles at state level. Utah filed criminal charges against Kalshi and its two co-founders this week, escalating a dispute that has also drawn in the CFTC and the Department of Justice on Kalshi’s side. At the same time the company continues to sign mainstream sports partners, having been named alongside Polymarket when the NBA signed a CFTC integrity pact earlier in the week.

For sportsbook operators, the round confirms that the largest prediction market now has the capital to keep fighting state regulators in court while widening its product range. With the midterms on 3 November, election trading is likely to keep Kalshi under political scrutiny for the rest of the year.