PrizePicks Suspends Team Picks in Missouri After Regulatory Pressure

PrizePicks told Missouri customers on Tuesday that it has suspended Team Picks, its sports prediction markets product, citing "updated legal requirements for prediction markets in Missouri." The company said entries already submitted will remain active, winning picks will pay out when markets close, and users can withdraw funds at any time. PrizePicks continues to offer Culture Picks, its non-sports prediction markets, to players in the state.

Why PrizePicks pulled Team Picks in Missouri

PrizePicks made the decision even though Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway did not name the company in a recent wave of cease-and-desist letters to prediction market platforms. Hanaway’s office sent letters last month to Crypto.com, Kalshi, Novig, Polymarket, Robinhood and Underdog arguing their sports event contracts amount to unlicensed sports wagering and gave recipients one month either to demonstrate compliance with Missouri law or cease offering those products in the state.

PrizePicks told customers the suspension is required "due to updated legal requirements for prediction markets in Missouri." The product is offered through PrizePicks’ subsidiary Performance Predictions II, which operates as a futures commission merchant and is the vehicle PrizePicks uses to sell Kalshi contracts inside its app. PrizePicks’ licensed daily fantasy sports product, Player Picks DFS, remains live after PrizePicks was licensed by the Missouri Gaming Commission as a daily fantasy sports operator in 2024.

How the Missouri enforcement effort frames prediction markets and sports wagering

Missouri voters approved sports betting in 2024 with an age minimum of 21 and a 10% tax on sportsbooks’ gross receipts. Attorney General Hanaway’s enforcement letters emphasise three legal points: licensing, taxation and minimum age. Hanaway’s office said five of the six recipients — including Kalshi — either allow users under 21 to participate or do not have adequate safeguards to keep Missourians under 21 off their platforms.

"Companies cannot repackage sports bets as 'event contracts' to avoid Missouri law," Hanaway said when announcing the letters.

Her office argues that products it classifies as sports event contracts should be treated as sports wagering and therefore fall within the licensing and tax regime administered by state authorities. The cease-and-desist campaign follows divergent federal appeals-court rulings about whether prediction markets fall under state gambling laws or under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

How PrizePicks’ product structure influenced its move

PrizePicks’ Team Picks does not run on a PrizePicks-hosted exchange. The company sells those contracts via Performance Predictions II and sources the contracts from Kalshi, which operates a regulated event-contracts exchange in other jurisdictions. That intermediary relationship is one reason PrizePicks acted to suspend Team Picks before the Attorney General named it: companies that hold state licences or want to preserve them often withdraw products more quickly than the exchanges that list contracts.

Other firms have taken similar steps in other states. Robinhood agreed last month to stop offering new sports event contracts in Michigan, while Gemini and Webull pulled products after Connecticut issued cease-and-desist notices. Ohio’s regulator used a Sixth Circuit ruling to send cease-and-desist letters to ten prediction market companies last week; Kalshi’s litigation in Ohio featured in that circuit’s decision.

Kalshi’s public response and the exchange argument

Kalshi has been the most vocal of the companies named in the Missouri letters. The company sent Nicole Kagan, Head of Research, to speak with Missouri media this week and to defend its model. In an interview with St. Louis Public Radio, Kagan compared Kalshi’s contracts to agricultural exchanges that farmers use to hedge crops and argued the platform does not set odds or benefit when customers lose.

"On our platform, what we’re running is a peer-to-peer exchange. So we’re not the house. We’re not setting pricing," Kagan said, adding the platform matches users with opposing opinions.

Kalshi points to circuit-court rulings that split on whether states or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have primary authority over prediction markets. The Third Circuit ruled for Kalshi in a New Jersey case; New Jersey has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the split. The Sixth and Ninth Circuits have reached opposite conclusions, finding states can enforce gambling laws against these products.

What operators and operators’ partners need to consider

For operators that offer both daily fantasy sports and prediction markets, the distinction between products matters legally and operationally. PrizePicks kept Player Picks DFS active under its Missouri daily fantasy sports licence from the Missouri Gaming Commission while suspending Team Picks, demonstrating how licence class and product architecture influence regulatory risk.

Platform partners and payment processors should expect faster product withdrawals from licence holders who want to avoid enforcement risk. Where a product is sold through a separate entity — for PrizePicks, Performance Predictions II — operators should review contractual and regulatory exposure for both the brand and any subsidiaries.

Where this dispute could go next

Missouri’s letters and the broader pattern of enforcement increase the likelihood the issue reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, because of the split among federal appeals courts over jurisdiction. Regulators in other states are already citing those circuit rulings when they send their own enforcement letters. Until there is definitive federal guidance, companies selling sports event contracts will face patchwork state responses and may continue to suspend or withdraw products to protect licences and market access.