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By Austin Taylor · Founder, Cope CompassLast updated August 12, 2026

Two States Cut Ties With the NCPG Over Kalshi

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Disclosure: Cope Compass is a dues-paying Silver organizational member of the National Council on Problem Gambling. That membership is affiliation and financial support, not endorsement in either direction, and it did not change what appears below. We think you should know it before you read the rest.

What happened

On August 11, the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling confirmed it is cutting ties with the national organization it had been affiliated with. Executive director Trey Delap put the reasoning in terms of what affiliation costs when you disagree on something foundational.

"After months of discussion, we've concluded that this is not simply a disagreement about one company. Affiliation means something. We cannot lend Nevada's name and credibility to an organization when we no longer believe we're aligned on a fundamental consumer-protection issue."
Nevada had been raising the issue for months. In a letter to NCPG executive director Heather L. Maurer dated May 22, 2026, the Nevada council flagged concerns about organizational neutrality and the line between harm-reduction engagement and endorsement, saying its board would keep evaluating the relationship. That was a warning, not a resignation.

According to reporting on the split, Nevada asked to pause its membership rather than leave outright while the disagreement was worked through. NCPG declined that option, which is what pushed it to a full break.

Michigan got there first. On July 1, 2026, Henry Williams, executive director of the Michigan Gaming Control Board, sent NCPG a withdrawal letter. Michigan's objection was about enforcement rather than affiliation:

"By partnering with a company that numerous states, including Michigan, are actively litigating against for disregarding state gaming laws, NCPG directly undermines state enforcement actions and risks weakening the positions of state regulatory bodies nationwide."
The timing was pointed. Michigan had obtained a temporary restraining order against Kalshi two days earlier, on June 29, for allegedly offering unlicensed sports gambling in the state. Beyond withdrawing, Michigan demanded NCPG remove all references to its affiliation, pulled its staff from NCPG boards and committees, and cancelled its paid sponsorship of NCPG's annual conference.

One distinction matters for reading this story accurately: these are different kinds of organizations. Nevada's council is an independent nonprofit affiliate. Michigan's Gaming Control Board is the state's gambling regulator. A regulator withdrawing from a prevention nonprofit is a different signal than an affiliate leaving, and both happened.

What Kalshi is, and what the deal was

Kalshi is a prediction market: a venue where people buy and sell contracts on whether a future event will happen. It has been registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a Designated Contract Market since November 2020, which is the foundation of its argument that it is federally regulated and not a sportsbook.

In January 2025 it began offering sports-event contracts. That business grew fast. As of February 2026, roughly 87% of Kalshi's $39.7 billion in trailing-year trading volume was in sports contracts. Its valuation has climbed from about $2 billion in mid-2025 to a reported $22 billion in 2026.

On May 18, 2026, NCPG announced Kalshi had joined as a Platinum member, the first member of a newly created "Financial Services and Trading" category, contributing $2 million over two years to fund a new Financial Trader Health and Safety Initiative covering equities, options, crypto, futures, and prediction markets.

Maurer, announcing it: "Innovation and responsibility can and must evolve together. Kalshi's engagement demonstrates a commitment to mitigating harm before it occurs and ensuring support resources are accessible when they are needed."

The dispute underneath

Two arguments are running at once, and they're worth separating.

Is it gambling? Delap's position is that the distinction is semantic: "The activity on the Kalshi platform has the same effect as gambling. 'Positions' and 'trades' are euphemisms." Michigan objected specifically to sports-event contracts being framed as investment or insurance products, arguing it undercuts the "for entertainment purposes only" message that state responsible-gambling programs are built on.

Who gets to decide? This is the larger fight, and it's live. On April 6, 2026, a divided Third Circuit panel held that the Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC exclusive federal jurisdiction over sports-related event contracts on registered exchanges. Arizona's attorney general filed 20 misdemeanor criminal charges against Kalshi entities on March 17, 2026, the first criminal charges against the company. Nevada obtained a preliminary injunction on May 18, and Kalshi later agreed to geofence the state or face $120,000 a day in fines. In April the CFTC and Justice Department took the unusual step of suing states to assert federal preemption, and in late July a large group of state attorneys general wrote the CFTC arguing it lacks the authority to preempt state sports-betting law.

So state regulators are actively litigating against a company that the national problem-gambling organization took money from. That's the collision.

The age question, and what we actually know

The clinical objection that both states lead with is age. Legal sports betting requires you to be 21 in effectively every state that offers it. Kalshi's terms set the floor at the age of majority, which is 18 in most states.

Delap tied that directly to harm: "Our decision is based on the elevated risk of harm to young people."

Here is where we want to be careful, because this is the part most coverage glosses.

The concern is well-founded in general terms. Prediction markets have the design features that drive addictive engagement in other products: continuous availability, variable reinforcement, push notifications, and a gamified interface. Dr. Amanda L. Giordano, an associate professor at the University of Georgia and author of A Clinical Guide to Treating Behavioral Addictions, wrote in June 2026 that combined trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket rose from under $5 billion in late 2025 to roughly $24 billion by April 2026, and flagged particular vulnerability for young people and those with addiction risk factors.

But no published study yet isolates gambling-disorder risk in the 18 to 20 cohort specifically on prediction markets. The argument as currently made is inferential: 18-year-olds can access it, young adults are known to be vulnerable to variable-reinforcement products, therefore the risk is elevated. That reasoning is sound, and we'd expect the data to bear it out. It just isn't published yet, and saying otherwise would be overstating what's known.

A peer-reviewed commentary in Addiction in 2026 raised the broader question of whether prediction markets constitute an emerging form of gambling. That's the direction the literature is heading. It hasn't arrived.

How big is this, really

Two institutional withdrawals, confirmed: Michigan and Nevada.

Beyond that, the picture is graded rather than binary. Washington's Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling has publicly criticized the partnership without leaving. Pennsylvania's Council on Compulsive Gambling has raised questions about what the $2 million is for while remaining a member. Minnesota state senator John Marty wrote NCPG in late July calling the relationship an "unholy alliance" and demanding it end, which is legislative pressure rather than an affiliate exit.

Delap has said other stakeholders across gaming, treatment, and regulation are "having serious conversations about withdrawing or redirecting their support." That may well be true, and the trajectory of this story points that way. But as of now, two organizations have actually left, and we'd rather tell you that than imply a wave that hasn't happened.

The structural question

Underneath the specifics is an older argument about who funds problem-gambling prevention.

NCPG's answer is that it has held a neutral position on legalized gambling for more than 50 years, and that "membership, partnership, sponsorship, and financial support do not constitute endorsement, nor do they influence NCPG's governance, policy positions, educational content, research priorities, or advocacy efforts." Maurer has framed engagement with new products as a public health obligation: understand the risks, push for consumer protections, fund research, make support reachable.

The counter-argument was put bluntly by Louis Ruggiero Jr., an advocate who says he lost more than $10 million to gambling over twelve years and founded The Gambling Truth Project, speaking in July about NCPG's industry funding generally rather than Kalshi specifically: "You can't hold the industry accountable when the industry is paying for the room." He isn't a clinician or a researcher, and we'd label the quote as advocacy. It's also the clearest statement of what Nevada and Michigan are worried about.

Both positions have a real case. Prevention work costs money, the industry has the money, and refusing all of it means doing less. Taking it means the appearance of a conflict, and sometimes the substance of one. Every organization in this field, including ours, sits somewhere on that spectrum.

What this means if you're in recovery

Practically, not much changes this week, and we don't want an organizational dispute to read as a reason to disengage from help.

The national helpline still operates. State councils in Nevada and Michigan still provide treatment referral and support; if anything, they've just made a point of their independence. Your state's problem-gambling council is generally the fastest route to funded treatment near you, and that's true regardless of its national affiliation.

The part worth carrying: if you're 18 to 20 and using a prediction market, you're using a product that state regulators in at least two states consider functionally gambling, and you're doing it at an age where you couldn't legally open a sportsbook account. Nobody has published the study on what that does yet. That's a reason for caution rather than reassurance.

If any of this describes your relationship with a trading or betting app, our crisis and help resources are a reasonable first stop.

Sources

This is a developing story. Facts above were verified as of August 12, 2026. Where we could not verify a detail independently, we've said so in the text rather than printing it.

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