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Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has sued sweepstakes casino operator VGW and prediction market Kalshi on the same day, alleging illegal gambling under state law. The VGW complaint puts a dollar figure on the state's sweepstakes market and adds Arkansas to a growing list of states challenging the dual-currency model.

Arkansas has opened a two-front legal fight against online gambling it says is unlicensed. One lawsuit targets VGW, the company behind Chumba Casino, LuckyLand and Global Poker. The other targets KalshiEX LLC and Kalshi Inc., the companies that own the Kalshi prediction market.

Both cases allege illegal gambling and violations of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Both also include an unjust enrichment claim. In each case the state seeks restitution, penalties, taxes and injunctive relief.

VGW complaint puts a dollar figure on Arkansas sweepstakes play

The VGW suit attacks the Gold Coin/Sweeps Coin model that almost every US sweepstakes casino relies on. It names ten affiliated VGW companies. Over the twelve months to June 2026, VGW also paid about $6 million in Arkansas sales and use tax, Gaming.net reported.

Those figures show a company declaring sales to the state and paying tax on them. Yet VGW holds no Arkansas casino license, the state alleges. The complaint also accuses VGW of letting 18-year-olds play, even though Arkansas casinos require players to be 21.

The case lands less than two months after the New York settlement. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that deal on September 9, 2026. It covered Chumba Casino, Global Poker and Luckyland Slots. VGW’s coin-based games were already off the table for New Yorkers by then, after her office sent the company a cease-and-desist letter in June 2025.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman went to court a few months earlier, claiming VGW’s sweepstakes casinos break Kentucky gambling law. Florida has also moved against dual-currency sweepstakes since June 2026. Arkansas now joins Kentucky, Florida and New York on that list. For operators using the same coin structure, the pattern points to rising legal exposure state by state.

Kalshi suit treats sports contracts as unlicensed casino gaming

The Kalshi complaint rests on a constitutional definition. The Arkansas Constitution’s definition of casino gaming expressly covers accepting wagers on sporting events. Kalshi has never held a casino-gaming license from the state commission, the state alleges. Nor has it held any other Arkansas authorization to take sports wagers.

The complaint expressly limits itself to state-law claims and relief under Arkansas law. That choice means the state is relying on its own consumer-protection statute rather than waiting on the CFTC. Money lost, betting that gets out of hand, and depression or other damage to mental health are dangers Kalshi understands its customers face, Griffin’s office said.

Filing both cases on the same day signals how Arkansas views the two products. The attorney general is treating sweepstakes casinos and sports event contracts as the same kind of unlicensed gambling. Other states may weigh whether to copy that approach.

The VGW case was filed in White County Circuit Court. The Kalshi case was filed in Independence County Circuit Court.

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Voters in Allen, DeKalb and Steuben counties each rejected inland casino gambling by double digits on November 3. The single new license in House Enrolled Act 1038, tied to a project of at least $500 million, now has no county that can host it.

With the measure defeated, the license created by House Enrolled Act 1038 cannot be granted by the Indiana Gaming Commission. A repeat ballot is also off the table. State law bars a second public question in any county that voted the measure down.

Allen County, where developers were seeking to build, carried the most weight. The county’s election-night summary counted 102,935 votes on the question, with 40.44% in favor. In DeKalb County, 7,374 voters said no. Steuben County recorded 6,234 no votes.

A $500 million project ends before a single application

The stakes were substantial. That minimum investment had to cover both the casino and its non-gambling amenities. At least 60% of that had to be spent within two years of the award. The license also carried a $150 million fee to the state, with $50 million of it going to a fund for former host communities hurt by casino closures.

The projected public return was large as well. A study done for the Indiana Gaming Commission estimated that an Allen County casino could generate $204 million in revenue alongside its annual state tax payments. Under the act, 10% of the casino’s tax payments would have gone to the northeast Indiana regional development authority.

The process hinged on the vote from the start. The commission’s July guidance said it would take applications only for a county or counties where voters approved inland casino gambling. None did.

Any revival now rests with the Indiana legislature

Gaming Commission officials said that with no county passing the referendum, nothing happens, and that any next steps are up to the legislature. That puts operators back in front of lawmakers.

Lawmakers have already redrawn this map once. Instead of creating a new license, a January 22, 2026 committee version of House Bill 1038 would have relocated the Ohio County riverboat license. That inland casino could have gone to Allen, DeKalb, Steuben or Wayne County. The enacted version instead created one new license and eliminated one unused racino license. Indianapolis was kept off the list because a casino there would pull business from the existing casinos in Shelbyville and Anderson.

The vote also lands in a state that is narrowing gambling elsewhere. House Bill 1052 lets the commission fine any operator or individual $100,000 for knowingly running an internet sweepstakes game in Indiana, starting July 1, 2026. Peer-to-peer skill-based poker is exempt. Indiana still has no legal online casinos.

Indiana was not alone on Election Day, as Nebraska voters also turned down a gambling expansion. In northeast Indiana, the act’s December 1, 2026 deadline for inland casino license applications now arrives with the commission taking no applications.

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Both linked measures to legalize mobile wagering through Nebraska's racetrack casinos trailed in unofficial returns. A defeat would close off a new market for sportsbooks and shows that doubts about tax relief can beat a heavily funded campaign.

Nebraska voters appear to have turned down online sports betting. Initiatives 440 and 441 would have amended the state constitution and statutes to allow mobile wagering through the state’s licensed racetrack casinos. The Secretary of State’s unofficial count, with 885 of 1,322 precincts fully reporting, had 440 trailing by about 296,000 to 354,000. The companion measure, 441, trailed by about 299,000 to 351,000. The results are not yet certified.

A loss would be a rare setback for the industry at the ballot box. Betting would stay in-person only at Nebraska’s five racetrack casinos. FanDuel, DraftKings and the racetrack operators would not gain a new market. Initiative sponsor Jordan McGrain called the midnight results “pretty clear.”

Opponents challenged the promised property-tax relief at the heart of the pitch

Tax relief was the core of the pitch. Supporters projected more than $166 million for the state’s property tax credit fund over ten years. Opponents countered that the money would flow to out-of-state gambling companies. Nebraska currently taxes casino gaming revenue at 20 percent. Of that tax, 70 percent goes to property tax relief credits.

A report commissioned by Tax Relief Nebraska, the committee behind the measures, estimated just under $87 million in new state tax revenue over five years. That projection did not carry the vote. Joey Spellerberg, the state treasurer, backed the opposition and said voters saw the promised tax benefits as negligible.

Should the unofficial result stand, gambling-harm arguments and doubts about tax relief would have carried a heavily outspent opposition to victory. That is a warning for future online casino and sports betting pushes in other states. It also comes as lawmakers are already restricting sweepstakes and prediction markets.

Funding and signature questions shadowed the campaign

The ballot route followed repeated failures in the Legislature. Lawmakers did not send a similar constitutional amendment to voters, including in 2024 and 2025. Tax Relief Nebraska then submitted more than 201,000 signatures for the amendment in late June 2026. It filed 146,000 for the companion statute. Election officials flagged possibly fraudulent signatures collected during the drive.

Funding also drew scrutiny. FanDuel and MGM subsidiary Roar Digital gave more than $3.5 million combined to Tax Relief Nebraska. The Legal Accountability Center asked the state’s disclosure commission to investigate. It cited the companies’ ownership in Ireland and the UK.

The proposed market was tightly drawn. Each racetrack gaming operator could have offered wagering through at most two online platforms. Wagering servers would have had to be located in Nebraska. State regulators would have had until June 1, 2027, to adopt rules for online wagering.

The count now moves toward certification. County abstracts of votes must reach the Secretary of State by November 23. State canvassers meet on November 30, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. to certify the results. Recounts in eligible races start December 2 at 9 a.m.

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A federal judge has barred Illinois from licensing, taxing or prosecuting sports event contracts listed on CFTC-regulated exchanges. The state's appeal sends the fight to the Seventh Circuit, which already has prediction-market cases from Wisconsin.

Illinois has lost, for now, its power to police sports event contracts traded on federally regulated exchanges. Judge Martha Pacold’s order in the Northern District of Illinois turns her early-October ruling into a formal injunction. It covers contracts listed on CFTC-regulated platforms such as Kalshi and Coinbase.

The order reaches three state tools. They are the Sports Wagering Act, the criminal gambling statute and an Illinois Gaming Board internet-wagering rule. The budget’s prediction-market fees fall with the licensing rules, because they apply only to providers holding a state license. Her first ruling had left the tax question open and called for more argument on the fees.

A large regulated market loses its grip on exchanges

The stakes are significant. Fiscal 2026 was the first year of the state’s per-wager tax on licensed sports wagering.

The Gaming Board had already tried to act. It sent cease-and-desist letters to KalshiEX, Crypto.com and Robinhood on April 1, 2025. Polymarket received one on Jan. 27, 2026. Those letters cited the Sports Wagering Act (230 ILCS 45) and the criminal code (720 ILCS 5/28-1(a)).

Lawmakers then took a different route. Gov. JB Pritzker signed the budget containing the new framework on June 16. Under the package, which includes SB 3019, prediction markets became exchange wagers under the Sports Wagering Act and needed a Gaming Board license. Each transaction carried a tax that would climb once a licensee passed five million exchange wagers. In September, Republican Rep. Travis Weaver filed House Bill 5811 to repeal the exchange-wager tax. His bill would leave the licensing rules in place.

Licensed online and mobile sportsbooks face their own costs. A first license for that category costs $15 million and runs four years, with each four-year renewal priced at $1 million.

Seventh Circuit now holds both Illinois and Wisconsin disputes

Courts are divided on whether state gambling laws reach CFTC-regulated sports contracts. Pacold’s order is a rare win for Kalshi and the federal regulator. Before her early-October decision, Kalshi had lost 16 federal court rulings in a row. In that opinion, Pacold found the state’s other laws in conflict with federal law because they control “what can be sold, as well as where it can be sold and to whom.”

The CFTC sued Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois on April 2, 2026, over their actions against federally registered designated contract markets. Chairman Michael Selig said the agency would defend market participants against “overzealous state regulators.”

For operators, the injunction offers room to keep listing sports contracts in Illinois for now. For the state, it removes a revenue stream and an enforcement path at once. Anticipating a legal challenge, legislators had kept the tax’s revenue out of their budget projections. The outcome now depends on a single appeals court.

On July 29, Judge William Griesbach ruled against the CFTC in Wisconsin, and the agency took that case to the Chicago-based court. Illinois has asked the Seventh Circuit to reverse and vacate Pacold’s order.

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Eagles running back Saquon Barkley sold his equity stake in Polymarket after NFL rules barred players from holding prediction-market investments. The case sets the league apart from the NBA and MLB, which have signed deals with the exchanges, as the NFL argues at the Supreme Court that sports event contracts are gambling.

Saquon Barkley no longer owns a piece of Polymarket. The Eagles running back sold his equity stake to comply with league rules, he told Front Office Sports in an interview published October 28. It is the first public case of the NFL applying its gambling rules to a player’s prediction-market investment.

Barkley bought into Polymarket before the league told players they could not hold such investments. The NFL goes over endorsement, investment and training rules with players before every season.

The league has now made clear that its sportsbook restrictions extend to prediction markets. It declined to comment on Barkley’s case specifically. The stance was not new to players. Kalshi and Polymarket were already off-limits to them as endorsers or brand ambassadors in January 2026. At that point, prediction markets were treated as gambling entities under the league’s gambling policy.

Other leagues are signing the exchanges the NFL keeps at arm’s length

The NFL’s approach puts it at odds with other major leagues. Polymarket became Major League Baseball’s Official Prediction Market Exchange on March 19, 2026. On October 26, 2026, the NBA named both companies its preferred prediction-market exchanges. The agreement gives them rights to league intellectual property and marketing.

NBA players face far lighter limits. They can hold stakes in the exchanges and appear in their marketing. The line is drawn only at promoting contracts on NBA games.

The split also shuts NFL players out of an industry that leans heavily on their sport. By the league’s own figures, football made up $1.8 billion of prediction-market trading on the season’s first Sunday. That was more than half of the day’s total.

The NFL wants state gambling law to govern sports contracts

The league is pressing that view at the Supreme Court. On October 8, 2026, it filed an amicus brief supporting New Jersey’s request for review in Flaherty v. KalshiEX, case No. 26-299. The NFL argued that sports prediction contracts are gambling. In its view, they are not financial swaps under exclusive federal oversight.

New Jersey filed its petition on September 2, 2026. It followed an April ruling in which the Third Circuit sided 2-1 with Kalshi. The appeals court found that the CFTC has exclusive oversight of sports-event contracts.

Many of the NFL’s concerns will be addressed through the CFTC’s ongoing rulemaking, Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana said. In her view, the agency already has the power to police sports-related event contracts.

The Supreme Court granted Kalshi a 30-day extension to answer New Jersey. Its response, originally due October 8, must now be filed by November 9.

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