A Carson City judge has handed the Gaming Control Board its most decisive win yet in the fight over event contracts.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board has secured a preliminary injunction barring Polymarket from operating in Nevada, after Judge Jason Woodbury of the First Judicial District Court ruled in the regulator’s favour on 29 May 2026. The order blocks QCX LLC, doing business as Polymarket US, from providing its prediction market services to people in the state, extending a legal campaign that began with a civil enforcement action in January. With the ruling, the Board says it has now restricted every unlicensed prediction market known to be operating in Nevada, having previously obtained injunctions against Kalshi and Coinbase. The regulator can be reached through its official channels at the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
The Ruling
Following the 29 May decision, Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Mike Dreitzer welcomed the outcome and signalled that the regulator intends to keep enforcing against unlicensed event contract operators. “We are very pleased with Judge Woodbury’s ruling and will continue to vigorously enforce Nevada law to safeguard gaming in our state,” said Mike Dreitzer, Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
The Board framed the win as part of a broader sweep. It said it has “successfully restricted” the operation of “all unlicensed prediction markets that had been known to be operating in Nevada,” and noted that “Because of previously entered preliminary injunction orders, Kalshi and Coinbase are prohibited from offering or facilitating sports-, election- and entertainment-related event contracts in the state of Nevada.” The Polymarket injunction therefore closes what the regulator presents as the last open door for unlicensed event contracts in the state.
How the Case Began
The legal action traces back to a civil enforcement complaint the Board filed on 16 January 2026. In its press release announcing the filing, the Board stated that it had “filed a civil enforcement action in the District Court for Carson City against BLOCKRATIZE, INC. d/b/a POLYMARKET; QCX LLC d/b/a POLYMARKET US; and ADVENTURE ONE QSS, INC. d/b/a POLYMARKET,” and that “the Board asked the court for a declaration and injunction to stop Polymarket from offering unlicensed wagering in violation of Nevada law.”
The Board’s theory of the case is jurisdictional and statutory. “Polymarket operates a derivatives exchange and prediction market where it offers event contracts for sale,” the filing announcement explained. “The Board considers offering sports event contracts, or certain other events contracts, to constitute wagering activity under NRS 463.0193 and 463.01962 and, therefore, entities offering such event contracts must be licensed.” The Board further deemed Polymarket’s operations to be “in violation of NRS 463.160, NRS 463.350, NRS 465.086, and NRS 465.092.”
The Federal Preemption Fault Line
At the heart of the dispute is the contested boundary between state gaming law and the federal Commodity Exchange Act. Polymarket and its peers position their event contracts as federally regulated derivatives overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an argument that, if accepted, would preempt state gaming regulators from intervening. Nevada’s position is the mirror image: that sports and similar event contracts are wagering by any functional measure, fall within the state’s gaming statutes, and therefore demand a state licence regardless of how the product is labelled.
That tension is not unique to Nevada. State gaming regulators across the US have been wrestling with the rise of CFTC regulated prediction markets, and the question of whether a federally listed event contract can override state gaming law is among the most consequential unresolved issues in the sector. The Carson City rulings give one state court’s answer, at least at the preliminary stage and within Nevada’s borders, but the broader federal question remains live in other forums.
What a Preliminary Injunction Means
A preliminary injunction is not a final judgment on the merits, but it is a substantive signal. To obtain one, the Board had to persuade the court that it was reasonably likely to prevail on the underlying claims, a standard the court found satisfied. The order keeps Polymarket out of Nevada while the litigation proceeds toward a full resolution, and it places the operator in the same restricted position the Board has already established for Kalshi and Coinbase.
For the operators, the practical effect is immediate exclusion from one of the most symbolically important gaming markets in the country. For Nevada, the value is as much demonstrative as it is local: the state that built the modern regulated gaming industry has shown it will use its courts to assert jurisdiction over event contracts rather than cede that ground to federal derivatives framing.
GC Analysis: Nevada Draws a Line Other States Will Study
Nevada has done something the rest of the industry has been waiting for someone to do: it has taken the prediction market preemption argument into court and, so far, won. The significance is less about Polymarket specifically and more about the precedent that a state gaming regulator can obtain injunctive relief against a self described federally regulated event contract platform. Every state that has watched Kalshi, Polymarket and Coinbase expand into sports adjacent contracts now has a live example of a regulator going on offence and getting a court to agree it is reasonably likely to win.
The unresolved tension, of course, is that these are state court rulings against a backdrop of federal CFTC oversight, and the ultimate question of preemption will be settled in a higher forum than Carson City. But regulators rarely need to win the war to change behaviour; they need to make the cost of operating in a market exceed the reward. Nevada has just clarified that cost. Expect compliance and legal teams at every major prediction market operator to be redrawing their state by state risk maps this week, with Nevada now firmly in the red.
