Nevada’s sportsbooks won $612.5 million from bettors in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s June 2026 monthly revenue report. That is just 3.82% of the state’s record $16.05 billion in total gaming win for the year, a share calculated for this article from the board’s own figures.
But sports betting’s outsized growth rate, up 19.97% for the year against 2.59% growth for gaming overall, meant it supplied roughly a quarter of every new dollar Nevada casinos made in fiscal 2026, a calculation the board’s report does not make and that has not appeared in coverage of the state’s fight with prediction market operator Kalshi.
That fight reached a turning point on Aug. 28, when a unanimous three judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Nevada can enforce its gambling laws against Kalshi’s sports contracts.
Judge Ryan Nelson wrote that Kalshi’s sports event contracts “should be construed as sports gambling” no matter what the company calls them, rejecting the argument that federal commodities law preempts Nevada’s gaming rules. Judge Kenneth Lee wrote separately to concur.
The panel sent Kalshi’s election and entertainment contracts back to a lower court for further review, so those questions remain unresolved.
A Small Slice of Nevada Casinos, an Outsized Engine of Growth
The board’s monthly report lists current dollar totals and year over year percent changes but never states what share of statewide win comes from sports wagering, or how much of the state’s growth that betting is responsible for.
Working backward from the board’s own percentages, sports betting brought in an estimated $510.5 million in fiscal 2025, meaning it grew by about $102 million this year. Total gaming win grew by about $405.1 million over the same span.
Divide one into the other and sports betting accounts for roughly 25.2% of Nevada’s entire dollar increase in gaming win, despite representing under 4% of the total both years. Both calculations are original to this article and are not stated in the board’s report.
$612.5 million: Nevada sportsbook win, fiscal year 2026, up 19.97% from an estimated $510.5 million the year before.
3.82%: sports betting’s share of Nevada’s record $16.05 billion in total gaming win this year, up from an estimated 3.26% the year before.
25.2%: the share of Nevada’s entire dollar growth in gaming win this year that came from sports betting alone, a figure calculated for this article and not published elsewhere.
That growth helps explain why Nevada regulators have spent more than a year in court trying to keep Kalshi’s sports contracts out of the state. Kalshi is a federally registered exchange that lets users trade contracts on the outcome of sporting events, elections and other occurrences.
Nevada regulators say those sports contracts are indistinguishable from a sports bet placed at a licensed book, just offered by a company that has never sought a Nevada gaming license.
How Nevada Got Here
The fight has moved through federal court for more than a year. A federal judge initially sided with Kalshi in April 2025, but reversed himself that November. On Nov. 25, 2025, U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon dissolved his own earlier injunction and ruled that Kalshi must stop offering sports prediction contracts in Nevada, writing that treating the contracts as federally regulated swaps “upsets decades of federalism regarding gaming regulation.”
Kalshi kept operating anyway. Nevada’s First Judicial District Court issued a preliminary injunction on May 18, 2026, and gaming board investigators later found the company was still allowing Nevada residents to enter prohibited contracts despite that order.
Kalshi agreed on July 23, 2026, to install third party geofencing to block Nevada bettors, facing fines of $120,000 per day if the system was not working by Aug. 12. Gaming Control Board Chairman Mike Dreitzer said at the time that “this agreement will ensure that Kalshi fully complies with Nevada law moving forward, or it will face stiff penalties.”
The Legal Fight, Month by Month
- April 2025: A federal judge initially rules in Kalshi’s favor on a preliminary basis.
- Nov. 25, 2025: The same judge, Andrew Gordon, reverses course and rules Kalshi must stop offering sports contracts in Nevada.
- April 6, 2026: The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules 2-1 for Kalshi in a New Jersey case, finding federal commodities regulators likely have exclusive jurisdiction.
- May 18, 2026: Nevada’s First Judicial District Court issues its own preliminary injunction against Kalshi’s sports, election and entertainment contracts.
- July 23, 2026: Kalshi agrees to geofence Nevada users after regulators say it violated the state court’s order, facing $120,000 a day in penalties if not compliant by Aug. 12.
- Aug. 28, 2026: The 9th Circuit rules unanimously that Nevada can enforce its gambling laws against Kalshi’s sports contracts, creating a split with the 3rd Circuit.
- Sept. 2, 2026: New Jersey’s attorney general petitions the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the circuit split.
- Sept. 3, 2026: The Nevada Gaming Control Board publicly praises the 9th Circuit ruling at its regular meeting.
A Circuit Split Now Sits With the Supreme Court
The 9th Circuit’s ruling directly conflicts with the 3rd Circuit’s April 6 decision in Kalshiex LLC v. Flaherty, which sided with Kalshi 2-1 and found that federal commodities regulators likely have exclusive jurisdiction over sports event contracts, blocking New Jersey from enforcing its own gambling law against the company.
With two federal appeals courts now disagreeing on the same legal question, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 2, arguing the justices need to decide whether states retain authority over sports wagering or whether Kalshi’s contracts fall under exclusive federal jurisdiction instead.
Similar litigation is active in at least 20 states, according to reporting cited at Nevada’s Sept. 3 board meeting. Gaming industry analysts do not expect the Supreme Court to act on the petition before late 2026 or 2027, even if it agrees to hear the case. Nationally, the American Gaming Association has estimated that states have lost more than $1 billion in sports betting tax revenue to prediction markets, a national figure that is not broken out by state.
Regulators and Kalshi Disagree by Billions on Youth Trading
At the Sept. 3 meeting, Dreitzer raised a specific worry about underage bettors. “I am deeply concerned about 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds who gamble on sports,” he said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Losses at that age may come out of tuition, rent, books or other necessities.” He cited a figure he attributed to CNN, saying 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds have made $4 billion in prediction market sports trades since the beginning of the year, not counting the football season that had not yet begun.
That figure does not exactly match CNN’s own published numbers. CNN’s analysis, first reported Aug. 28 and detailed further in an Aug. 31 Fortune report, found that Kalshi users ages 18 to 21, a bracket that runs one year older than Dreitzer’s, traded an estimated $5.4 billion in all contract types this year, with $3.9 billion of that specifically in sports related contracts.
Dreitzer’s narrower age group, which excludes 21 year olds, produced a higher rounded figure than CNN’s own sports specific total for the broader group that includes them. Neither this article nor the underlying reports resolve that gap, which may reflect rounding, a different cutoff date, or a different data pull, but the two figures should not be treated as interchangeable.
Kalshi disputes that its young users represent a meaningful share of its business. A company spokesperson told CNN that users ages 18 to 21 make up just 3.14% of Kalshi’s overall trading volume, according to Fortune’s report.
Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara told the Review-Journal that the company screens for underage users with identification and Social Security checks, machine learning tools, and monthly reporting on blocked signups, and argued Kalshi belongs under federal exchange regulation rather than state by state gambling law. “A federal exchange, like financial exchanges, have always been regulated federally,” she said.
Fiscal 2025 vs. Fiscal 2026, Side by Side
| Measure | FY2025 (estimated) | FY2026 (reported) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total statewide gaming win | $15.64 billion | $16.05 billion | +2.59%, about $405.1 million |
| Sports pool win | $510.5 million | $612.5 million | +19.97%, about $102.0 million |
| Sports betting’s share of total win | 3.26% | 3.82% | +0.56 points |
FY2026 total win, sports pool win, and both percent change figures come directly from the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s June 2026 monthly revenue report, which covers the 12 months from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026. FY2025 figures are estimates calculated for this article by dividing the board’s reported FY2026 totals by its reported percent change, since the board’s report does not publish the prior year’s absolute dollar totals. The dollar change figures, the share of total win in each year, and the calculation that sports betting produced about a quarter of the state’s total dollar growth are all original to this article.
Ninth Circuit ruling details are drawn from Holland & Knight’s Aug. 28, 2026 legal analysis and the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Sept. 4, 2026 report on the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s Sept. 3 meeting. Third Circuit ruling details are drawn from court records in Kalshiex LLC v. Flaherty, decided April 6, 2026. The Nov. 25, 2025 district court ruling is drawn from The Nevada Independent’s report on Judge Andrew Gordon’s decision. The July 2026 geofencing agreement and penalty terms are drawn from News3LV’s July 28, 2026 report and the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s own press release. New Jersey’s Supreme Court petition date is drawn from CasinoBeats’ Sept. 3, 2026 report on the filing. The $1 billion national tax revenue estimate is drawn from iGaming Business’s Aug. 28, 2026 roundup, citing the American Gaming Association, and is a national figure not specific to Nevada. The CNN trading volume analysis for Kalshi users ages 18 to 21 is drawn from Fortune’s Aug. 31, 2026 report. Kalshi’s response and Dreitzer’s and Lara’s quotes are drawn from the Review-Journal’s Sept. 4, 2026 report.
