KVIG Informative

Nevada gambling regulators say they bought illegal sports bets through Kalshi from inside state lines, weeks after a court ordered the company to block exactly that. Now they want the company to pay $120,000 for every day it kept happening.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board asked a Carson City court to impose $120,000 in daily fines against prediction market platform Kalshi, alleging the company failed to meet an Aug. 12 court-ordered deadline to stop offering sports, election and entertainment event contracts to people physically located in Nevada.

The board’s court filing states that state gaming investigators were able to purchase multiple prohibited event contracts from within Nevada using mobile devices after the deadline passed, transactions the filing says should not have been possible under the court’s order.

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A Kalshi spokesperson called the board’s motion “ridiculous” and said the company would fight it, stating that Kalshi used a state-approved company, GeoComply, to implement geofencing in Nevada and kept the state updated at every step. The spokesperson said any lingering issue was addressed within hours.

The board’s filing argues Kalshi has profited enormously from its continued violations of Nevada law and that the company cannot obscure the fact it missed an agreed-upon compliance deadline.

The geofencing requirement stems from a July agreement between Kalshi and the board, which set the Aug. 12 deadline for Kalshi to complete a multi-source geofencing solution through a third-party provider, after an earlier court order in the spring required Kalshi to stop letting Nevada residents trade certain contracts without a state gaming license.

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The fine dispute unfolds alongside a larger, unresolved legal fight. Nevada, Kalshi and two other prediction market operators are awaiting a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that could determine whether the state has the authority to bar the companies from operating in Nevada at all, regardless of how the geofencing dispute is resolved.

Whether Kalshi’s geofencing genuinely failed or Nevada’s investigators found a way around a system that was actually working is now a question for a Carson City judge. Until that’s settled, the fine keeps accruing at $120,000 a day — money Kalshi may never have to pay if the appeals court sides with the company on the bigger question of whether Nevada had any authority to block it in the first place.