salt lake city — For more than a century, Utah has been gambling almost entirely outside the state. No casinos, lotteries, or racetracks allow betting, a prohibition rooted in the conservative principles 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 country is fighting a new, more challenging battle to continue gambling beyond its borders. It is about to enact a law aimed at undermining it Prediction markets Like Kalshi and Polymarket, which allows anyone with a smartphone to bet 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 these markets constitute financing or gambling, Utah has already made its decision.
“We are putting a casino in the pocket of every American, and they are specifically targeting young people,” said Gov. Spencer Cox. “What they are doing is truly terrible, and we will make sure that does not happen in our state.”
Cox said he would sign legislation creating Utah’s conservative state At odds with the federal government. Calci has already filed a lawsuit against the state, and the company has the support of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency responsible for regulating financial markets.
The conflict puts Utah, a place not known for its combat, on the front lines of a cultural, political and economic battle sweeping the country. On the one hand there is a country that is strongly influenced by what is widely known as Mormons Church, with both politicians and religious leaders treating the issue as a moral crusade. On the other hand, there is a growing industry — Calci and Polymarket are valued at $20 billion each after their recent fundraising rounds — with connections in Washington that may offer some regulatory protection.
President Donald Trump’s eldest son is an advisor to both Calci 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 countries deal with this issue in the future.
“What is at stake here is whether states will be able to regulate gambling or whether gambling will be financed and ultimately regulated by Congress,” said Todd Phillips, a professor at Georgia State University who has written extensively on the issue of regulating prediction markets.
Polymarket and Kalshi allow participants to buy and sell contracts linked to the likely outcome of an event. Contract prices typically range between 1 cent and 99 cents, which roughly translates to the percentage of clients who believe this event will occur.
The companies say they offer products that allow customers to manage risk, such as how farmers can buy corn futures to lock in the price of their crops ahead of time. Derivative markets, such as the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, have long offered what are known as binary options to investors, who bet on whether an event will happen or not.
But unlike those derivative markets, the bulk of trading volume on Kalshi and nearly half of Polymarket is so Now associated with sports. Calci said it saw trading volume of more than $1 billion in the Super Bowl alone.
Utah is seeking to limit the ability of prediction markets to do business in the state by targeting proposition betting on sports, which can be a significant source of their revenue.
The bill Cox plans to sign would expand the state’s gambling ban to include bets on specific events that occur in a game rather than the outcome of the game. Examples of these “prop bets” include how well a particular player will perform, or a team reaching a certain threshold such as rebounds or other metrics.
The legislation also aims to stop sports betting companies like FanDuel and DraftKings that have set up their own prediction markets, which analysts say could allow the companies to get around government gambling bans.
Because of Utah state officials’ vocal opposition, Calci preemptively sued the state in late February, asking a judge to block Utah from enforcing gambling restrictions on the platform. A federal judge has not yet ruled on Kalshi’s request. Other judges in Nevada and Massachusetts issued early rulings in favor of states seeking to ban Calcci and PoleMarket from offering sports betting in their states, while judges in New Jersey in Tennessee ruled in Calcci’s favor.
Company spokeswoman Elizabeth Diana N. Calci says its product is different from sports betting companies or casinos because customers bet against each other rather than against “the house.”
The Trump-era Commodity Futures Trading Commission agreed with Calci and asserted that it has exclusive regulatory oversight of prediction markets. The agency says states cannot prevent products from operating in their jurisdiction simply because they are morally objectionable.
“To those who seek to challenge our authority in this area, let me be clear, we will see you in court,” Chairman Michael Selig recently said in a video posted on social media.
It’s the first major issue on which Cox has clashed with Trump in the year and a half since the Republican governor took office He worked his way into Trump’s good graces After not voting for him in 2016 and 2020.
Patrick Mason, chair of the Department of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, said he’s not surprised to see Cox and other Utah Republicans taking a stand against prediction markets, even if it means standing against their party’s leadership in Washington. In the state, where about half the population of 3.5 million are Latter-day Saints, even a simple game of church bingo is a rare sight.
“Maybe they play for M&“Ma’am,” he said, “but never the money.”
All of the state’s major politicians, including the governor, lieutenant governor, and the entire congressional delegation, are members of the church, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City. Mason explained that when they view an issue as moral rather than political, the teachings of religion often take precedence over appeasing the party.
Church doctrine prohibits gambling in any form, saying it is driven by “the desire to get something for nothing” and is destructive to individuals and families.
“The idea that it goes against business ethics, and some kind of fair exchange, has always been at the heart of how a lot of people think about themselves in terms of Utah identity, and certainly Latter-day Saint identity and morality,” Mason said.
Because of Utah’s religious roots, the state has banned gambling since it joined the union in 1895. Along with Hawaii, the state has the strictest gambling ban in the country. Utah doesn’t even allow large-scale, multi-state lotteries like Powerball or Mega Millions.
If Congress doesn’t step in to clarify whether these new prediction markets are legal, the issue will be left to the courts, said Phillips, the professor who focuses on industry regulation.
“The line between gambling and finance is very fine,” Phillips said. “There’s a reason why Congress repeatedly steps in to identify and regulate financial markets when products veer too close to gambling.”
There is already some movement on Capitol Hill, led in part by another Republican from Utah.
Republican Rep. Blake Moore of Utah and Democratic Rep. Salud Carbajal of California introduced bipartisan legislation this week to more aggressively regulate prediction markets. The bill prohibits prediction markets from allowing betting on war, assassinations, terrorist attacks, or election results, and also allows states to ban sports-related betting.
“We, as a society, should not bet on whether we will invade Cuba,” Moore said.
Senate Democrats also said they would introduce legislation banning betting on violence.
“It’s crazy that this is legal,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on social media.
In court filings, Calci has tried to argue that the sports predictions market has economic utility and benefit. He uses the example of an insurance company that insures the careers of college athletes using prediction markets to hedge risks. Kalci also says hotels, travel agencies and stadium management companies may be able to use prediction markets to hedge their risks against underperforming sports.
Moore said he is not swayed by Calcci and Polmarket’s economic arguments.
“Utah’s economic outlook has been strong for many years,” he said. “I don’t see why we need to adopt this as an economic tool.”