LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada’s top legal officer has won a major court battle against popular online trading and crypto apps that try to offer sports betting without a state license.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that online platforms like Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood must follow Nevada’s strict gambling laws if they want to offer what they call “sports-event contracts”—which let users bet on the outcomes of games.
These apps tried to argue they aren’t actually gambling sites. Instead, they claimed to be “financial markets” regulated by the federal government, which they argued put them beyond the reach of Nevada state regulators.
The court rejected that argument completely.
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What is an “event contract” anyway?
In simple terms, an event contract is a “yes or no” bet on a real-world event. For example: “Will the Las Vegas Raiders win this Sunday?”
If you think yes, you buy a contract. If they win, you get paid. If they lose, you lose your money.
While the apps argue this is just a modern financial tool, Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford pointed out that if it looks like sports betting and acts like sports betting, it is sports betting.
What does this mean for Nevadans?
Because Nevada has some of the strictest gambling rules in the country to protect consumers, the state requires any company offering sports bets to have a local gaming license.
Now that the court has backed Nevada, these apps cannot legally offer these sports bets to people inside the state without getting a gaming license first.
Nevada has already cracked down on these platforms. Earlier this year, the state ordered sites like Polymarket, Coinbase, and Kalshi to stop operating here. In response, Kalshi had to set up “geofencing” technology—which uses location data to block anyone physically inside Nevada from using their app to make these prohibited bets.
“Sports betting does not become something else simply because a company calls it an ‘event contract,’” Attorney General Ford said. “Nevada has built the gold standard for gaming regulation, and we will not allow companies to operate outside the law.”
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