Immediately after New York Governor Kathy Hochul and State Attorney General Tish James announced a $36 billion illegal gambling lawsuit against Kalshi last month, the prediction market behemoth struck back in the press, all but accusing the state of colluding with the legal sports betting industry.
"You're gonna have a lot of pissed-off New Yorkers if we get shut down in New York," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told the hosts of the CNBC show "Squawk Box" last week.
Mansour, speaking in a tech bro staccato, said he offered Governor Hochul an olive branch in the form of $10 billion in tax revenue over five years, and was met with silence.
"When you look at a tax that would have raised 5X the pied-à-terre [tax] is gonna raise over the next five years, and we're not just not even getting a response, it begs the question of, who is benefiting here?" Mansour said. "I think it's the Draft Kings and the casinos. Who else is benefiting? It's definitely not the consumers. We're protecting them against making money?"
“You have an industry that is disruptive and they’re not happy about that,” says @Kalshi CEO @mansourtarek_ after New York sued the prediction market company. https://t.co/RruxolMNtz pic.twitter.com/mymgwKnaSP
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) August 3, 2026
Kalshi's argument—that the state was stupid to turn down a major windfall in a time of perennial budget deficits, when the state budget is already juiced with billions from sports betting apps—was echoed by a strange coalition, from NBA player (and Kalshi investor) Kyle Kuzma, to Hochul's gubernatorial opponent, Republican Bruce Blakeman. “She doesn’t know how to make a deal, she doesn’t understand business, she doesn’t know how to raise revenue," Blakeman scoffed.
The Hochul administration responded with sarcasm and righteousness, likening Kalshi's $10 billion tax offer to "bribery" so they can operate outside the law.
Kalshi's claim that they would raise $10 billion over five years, which has mostly gone unexamined, is astounding, because it assumes that New Yorkers will spend far more on betting than they already are. The state's mobile sports-betting industry is already the largest in the country, ballooning to $2.5 billion in revenue last year and generating $1.32 billion in tax revenue for state coffers.