Polymarket to End Michigan Sports Event Contracts by Nov 25

Polymarket will stop offering sports event contracts in Michigan by the end of the day on November 25, 2026. The Michigan Gaming Control Board confirmed the date. This concession reaches past a single platform. It closes a regulatory front that already pushed Coinbase and Robinhood out of the same market, and it leaves the state's gambling law standing as the standard these products have to meet.

Sports event contracts amount to unlicensed gambling under Michigan law, the MGCB has argued, and the courts have largely backed that reading. A preliminary injunction against Kalshi gave the regulator its first clear win. Then a Sixth Circuit decision upheld the lower court's ruling, and that removed Polymarket's main route to keeping the service alive. Polymarket US had tried to block the state from applying its gaming rules. It failed to make that case and will now comply with the court outcomes.

The exits have arrived in sequence. Robinhood stopped trading sports event contracts on October 9, having agreed to do so on September 9. Coinbase followed on October 10. Polymarket's deadline is the latest, and for now the last in that line. "One by one, from Kalshi to Robinhood and Coinbase, and this latest agreement with Polymarket, we're holding the national sports betting industry accountable to Michigan law," Attorney General Dana Nessel said. Working with the MGCB, she added, the state is protecting residents by making sure gaming happens through licensed and regulated channels, with the safeguards the law provides.

For operators, the practical point is simple. The event-contract label hasn't insulated these products from state gaming rules. Michigan treated the contracts as wagers and required the companies behind them to answer to the same licensing framework as sportsbooks. That position now has court backing, which makes it harder for any platform to argue that a federally regulated exchange sits outside state gambling law.

For players in Michigan, the change is narrow but concrete. After November 25, sports event contracts will no longer be available through Polymarket. Anyone holding positions or planning trades around those markets should expect the service to wind down on that date, not later. The rest of Polymarket's offering isn't addressed in the agreement.

The deadline itself is worth a second look. November 25, 2026 is a fixed date, and the wording is end of day, so there's no grace period into the following week. Platforms that have already exited did so on similarly specific dates. Regulators, it seems, are setting clear cutoffs rather than open-ended wind-downs.

What this settles is the argument, not just the service. A state gaming regulator has now used the courts to force a prediction market off sports contracts, and the companies involved have complied rather than fight on. Any operator still treating event contracts as a category apart from sports betting should read the Sixth Circuit outcome carefully. Michigan has shown it will litigate. It has shown it wins, too.