By Krystal Hur
Nevada on Friday won a temporary restraining order to prevent prediction-market platform Kalshi from offering event-based contracts related to sports, elections and entertainment.
Kalshi must obtain all required state gambling licenses and prohibit users under 21 years old from using its platform to offer such contracts, according to the order from Nevada's First Judicial District Court. Nevada gambling regulators had sought the order from the court. The ban will last for 14 days, with a hearing to be held April 3.
Kalshi sent an email to users Saturday informing them of the ban. Customers will be able to sell their positions related to the banned markets or wait for them to resolve, but they won't be able to buy new contracts in those markets, it said. Contracts related to all other markets, including the weather and cryptocurrencies, are still available, Kalshi said.
"We built Kalshi to give everyone fair and open access to markets," the email said. "Citizens of Nevada should not be forced into a business model designed to penalize winners and maximize user losses."
A spokeswoman for Kalshi declined to comment.
Kalshi and Polymarket, a competing prediction-markets platform, offer event-based contracts tied to everything from politics to the weather. A large amount of betting is focused on professional and college sports, putting the platforms in competition with betting sites like FanDuel and DraftKings.
Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
The order is the latest blow against Kalshi's efforts to continue operating in all 50 states as battle lines form between officials at the federal and state level over whether event-based contracts are distinct from online betting. Just a few days earlier, Arizona filed criminal charges against the parent companies of Kalshi, accusing them of operating an illegal gambling business without a license.
Nevada, the country's gambling capital, has become a key battleground, with the state arguing that Kalshi must obtain gambling licenses to keep operating in the state.
"Kalshi has repeatedly stated that its operations are legal in 50 states, which is clearly not true," Mike Dreitzer, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said in a statement. "Prediction markets, to the extent they facilitate unlicensed gambling, are illegal in Nevada, and we have a statutory duty to protect the public."
States including Massachusetts and Michigan have sued Kalshi for illegal sports betting, arguing that the nascent and fast-growing industry offers illegal betting.
Kalshi in recent months has sued states including Arizona, Iowa and Utah to stop what it believed were impending bans. The company said its event contracts were regulated by federal jurisdiction, rather than the states.
Kalshi is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as is Polymarket's U.S. platform launched late last year, which focuses primarily on sports and is smaller than its main international platform. The commission in February filed a "friend of the court" brief in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that it had exclusive jurisdiction over the commodities-derivatives market, including event contracts.
Write to Krystal Hur at krystal.hur@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 22, 2026 14:40 ET (18:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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