Baltimore took two prediction-market platforms to court Thursday, arguing their sports-linked contracts are unlicensed gambling. Kalshi and Polymarket are the targets. Coinbase, Robinhood and Webull are named as co-defendants.
Mayor Brandon Scott and the Baltimore City Council filed the pair of suits in Baltimore City Circuit Court. The complaints invoke the city’s Consumer Protection Ordinance and seek maximum statutory penalties, restitution for affected customers and disgorgement of allegedly unlawful proceeds. The Kalshi complaint names eight counts of deceptive and unfair trade against four platforms.
Scott did not mince words. “These companies are running sportsbooks without licenses and betting that a new label will put them above the law. It won’t,” he said. Baltimore, he added, “will not let multibillion-dollar companies put profits over people and harm our communities through illegal gambling.”
The suits lay out a straightforward claim: Kalshi and Polymarket offer the same wagers as licensed sportsbooks. Game winners, point spreads, player-performance contracts. All of it. Yet they bypass the state oversight, taxation and consumer safeguards that Maryland-licensed operators must follow. The city wants the court to block both platforms from offering unauthorized sports betting to Baltimore residents.
City Solicitor Ebony Thompson put it plainly. Kalshi and Polymarket “cannot circumvent Baltimore’s consumer protections by repackaging gambling as something else or claiming federal regulation puts them beyond the reach of our laws.” That part is the core legal theory.
The Kalshi complaint names seven entities: Kalshi Inc., KalshiEX LLC, Robinhood Markets, Robinhood Derivatives, Webull Corporation, Webull Financial and Coinbase Financial Markets. Baltimore alleges the three partner platforms offer Kalshi event contracts directly through their own prediction-market segments. Users can trade sports contracts without ever leaving the apps. The complaint also argues that “combos” on Kalshi and Robinhood function like parlays offered by traditional sportsbooks.
Polymarket faces its own suit. That complaint names QCX LLC, Blockratize Inc. and QC Tech LLC, collectively referred to as Polymarket. Baltimore alleges the company blurred the line between a prediction market and a sportsbook by standing up an internal market-making team that can take positions against its own users. Customers, in other words, may be trading against the house rather than against one another. The complaint further alleges Polymarket’s marketing creates a misleading impression its offerings are lawful and regulated.
Every defendant is accused of deceptive practices for marketing sports contracts as products that can “lawfully be purchased and traded in Maryland,” according to Cointelegraph.
Kalshi pushed back. A spokesperson told The Block that people “use regulated prediction markets like Robinhood, Kalshi and CME because they’re neutral, fair and transparent marketplaces.” Kalshi, the spokesperson said, “spent years getting regulated by the federal government and abide by all applicable regulations, including consumer protection laws.” Then a sharper note: “If the Mayor has genuine concerns about guardrails, we’re always happy to chat. In the meantime, we will defend these claims in court.”
Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment from The Block. It did tell Cointelegraph that “city-specific action runs counter to the CFTC’s established framework for regulating prediction markets.” The spokesperson said courts have recognized that prediction markets on CFTC-registered exchanges “are governed by federal law, not a patchwork of state and local rules.”
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Chair Michael Selig, and the platforms themselves, have argued that event contracts on prediction markets are “swaps” within the CFTC’s purview. Baltimore and other state-level authorities dispute that characterization.
Many experts expect the conflict to end with an appeal to the Supreme Court. No hearing date has been set.
