There is now another lawsuit over the definition of gambling in Wisconsin.
The prediction market company Novig and its parent company, Ludlow Exchange, this week filed a lawsuit to cut off the lawsuit from the state over prediction markets.
Novig is fighting the claim from Wisconsin’s attorney general that prediction markets are skirting Wisconsin’s gambling laws and allowing people to place illegal bets.
“Wisconsin remains free to license and police sportsbooks, casinos, and every other form of gambling conducted outside a federally designated contract market,” Novig argues in its lawsuit. “Preemption reaches only trading on a market Congress placed within the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction.”
Wisconsin AG Josh Kaul sued other prediction market companies in April.
Kaul argues that sports betting can only occur in state-regulated sportsbooks. In Wisconsin, those sportsbooks are all run by the state’s tribes.
“Except in limited circumstances, sports betting and other forms of commercial gambling have long been illegal in Wisconsin. Yet, as alleged in these lawsuits, the defendant companies have chosen to flout Wisconsin law through disguising the sports betting they facilitate on their online platforms as ‘event contracts,’ which pay out just like ordinary bets based on the odds of sports-related outcomes,” Kaul argued in his lawsuit.
Novig says the markets, which allow people to bet and win money on the outcome of games, is legally no different than buying and trading stocks.
The federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission is also involved in the case. The FCTC has asked a federal judge for an injunction to stop Kaul’s lawsuit. The CFTC says Kaul’s case violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause.
