Coinbase Financial Markets will stop offering new sports-related event contracts to Michigan customers at 12:00 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, October 10, and close out every open customer position by the same deadline, under a negotiated stipulation the Michigan Gaming Control Board confirmed on October 7, according to CDC Gaming. In return, Michigan agreed not to take enforcement action against Coinbase while it complies and while related appeals move through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
The stipulation, which U.S. District Judge Shalina D. Kumar signed on September 23, covers new sports contracts traded on KalshiEX and other designated contract markets, according to iGaming Times. Michigan promised not to pursue Coinbase, its affiliates or officers during compliance and must give 10 days notice of any breach, and the order runs until the Sixth Circuit appeals involving Coinbase, Robinhood, Polymarket or Kalshi are finally resolved, including at the Supreme Court, or the state-court injunction against Kalshi is dissolved. No payment was recorded and nothing was decided on the merits.
Coinbase is the third major venue Michigan has pushed out of sports contracts, following a nearly identical agreement with Robinhood Derivatives LLC and a state-court preliminary injunction against KalshiEX LLC, according to CDC Gaming. MGCB Executive Director Henry Williams said Wednesday: "Coinbase joining Robinhood and Kalshi in stepping back from these unlicensed sports contracts underscores Michigan's commitment to enforcing its gaming laws." Attorney General Dana Nessel added that the deals were "making a clear impression on the executives of the illegal sports betting industry," according to SCCGManagement.
Coinbase only launched its prediction-market exchange in January 2026, built in partnership with Kalshi, and just months into its first year it is already geofencing a state, according to The Lines. Nessel filed suit against Kalshi in March alleging violations of the Lawful Sports Betting Act, and Coinbase's own request for a preliminary injunction was denied in August, according to The Lines. Coinbase's appeal is now stayed pending resolution of the related appeals from Robinhood, Polymarket and Kalshi.
The board's broader campaign has been to classify sports-related event contracts as unlicensed sports wagering when offered without a state gaming license, while Coinbase maintains such contracts fall under federal commodities regulation, according to World Casino Directory's summary of the arrangement. The MGCB this week described the operators as "unlicensed operators offering sports wagering products presented as federally regulated," per Yogonet. Michigan's attorney general office and the board said they will continue working jointly so that sports wagering in the state goes through licensed Michigan sportsbooks, according to RG.org.
The timing matters beyond Michigan. Courts have now blocked prediction markets in Nevada, Michigan and Washington, with 21 states contesting their legal status as of early October, according to WSN's legal tracker. The NFL's amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the New Jersey case against Kalshi, filed October 8, argues sports prediction contracts are gambling that states should regulate, not financial swaps under exclusive CFTC jurisdiction. Michigan's stipulation pattern suggests states are no longer waiting for that case to be decided.
So what to watch is whether Michigan's template exports. The sequence there is now a playbook: attorney general action, then a negotiated halt with a no-enforcement pledge that preserves every legal defense. It cleared Kalshi, Robinhood and Coinbase from the state without a single merits ruling, and it gives the MGCB what it wanted while leaving the federal question untouched. The next states to try it, and what the Sixth Circuit and the Supreme Court make of it, will decide whether sports contracts on prediction markets survive in the states at all.