Is Novig legal in Wisconsin?

The complaint was filed August 14, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (No. 3:26-cv-00761). The plaintiff is Ludlow Exchange, LLC, doing business as Novig, a Delaware company that Novig, Inc. formed on October 14, 2025 to run a CFTC-regulated exchange (p.2, ¶4; p.7, ¶19). The defendants are Attorney General Joshua L. Kaul and John Dillett, administrator of the Division of Gaming in the Department of Administration, each sued in an official capacity (p.1). Novig names no state agency (p.9, ¶28).

The complaint gives two reasons for suing now, both Novig's account:

• It had just started in Wisconsin. Novig "began offering these event contracts to customers located in Wisconsin last week," it says, a week before the filing (p.2, ¶4).
• It expects to be next. Pointing to the attorney general's April 23, 2026 suits against Kalshi, Polymarket and Crypto.com and their affiliates, it says "Novig expects that Wisconsin will imminently bring an enforcement action against it" (p.5, ¶13).

The complaint describes no letter, order or suit aimed at Novig itself. We found none either.

The complaint pleads a single claim: that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts Wisconsin law under the Supremacy Clause (p.29). It asks the court for two things (p.44):

• An injunction, preliminary and permanent, stopping the two officials from enforcing against Novig Wis. Stat. § 945.01, § 945.03 (including the commercial gambling provisions in (1m)(b), (c) and (g)), the public nuisance statutes §§ 823.01 and 823.02, and any other Wisconsin law that would regulate how its exchange lists, trades or settles event contracts.
• A declaration that those laws are preempted as applied to contracts on its exchange.

It also asks for expedited consideration of the preliminary injunction (p.7, ¶18). Novig's core argument is that event contracts "are quintessential 'swaps'" under the Act and so fall within the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction (p.2, ¶5). It says that without relief it risks a Class I felony charge under § 945.03(1m) if it keeps offering contracts in Wisconsin (p.7, ¶16).

We found no Wisconsin filing that answers Novig. The state's view of the product comes from its own suits against other companies. Its Department of Justice announced on April 23, 2026 that "it is suing Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket, Crypto.com, and their affiliates" to halt "their alleged facilitation of illegal sports betting." Attorney General Kaul said that "[t]hinly disguising unlawful conduct doesn't make it lawful."

Those suits ask for a declaration that making sports-related event contracts available to customers in Wisconsin violates § 945.03(1m) and creates a public nuisance, plus injunctions to stop it. Novig is not named. Its complaint argues the same theory "applies to Novig with the same force" (p.27, ¶85); that is Novig's reading of the state's position, not the state's statement about Novig. Kalshi in Wisconsin and Polymarket in Wisconsin follow those cases.

We found no ruling. The complaint is the only filing in this case we have read. The court's docket needs a PACER account, and the public index we use refused our request for this check; such indexes also lag the court's own system. So we cannot say whether the officials have answered, whether Novig filed a separate motion for a preliminary injunction, or whether a hearing is set. We draw no conclusion from the silence.

The federal regulator has its own case against the state. On April 28, 2026 the CFTC said it had sued Wisconsin "in response to the state's lawsuits" against five CFTC-regulated platforms, with Chairman Michael S. Selig saying "States cannot circumvent the clear directive of Congress." That is the CFTC's position.

That case, United States v. State of Wisconsin (E.D. Wis. No. 2:26-cv-00749), was stayed and administratively closed on September 8, 2026 pending a decision on appeals in the Seventh Circuit. Novig is not a party to it.

Novig's complaint argues there is no license to get. It says Wisconsin "has no state-run sports wagering licensing regime" and has licensed no non-tribal mobile sports wagering operator. The two exceptions it lists are tribal gaming compacts and 2025 Wisconsin Act 247, signed April 9, 2026, which carved out certain electronic sports wagers run on servers on tribal lands (pp.25-26, ¶80). The Division of Gaming, it says, licenses casino operators, their management and holding companies, their employees and gaming vendors (p.28, ¶86).

It also says Novig's group tried the state route elsewhere first. By the complaint's account, Colorado approved an Internet Sports Betting Operator license for Novig Laboratories, LLC on September 21, 2023; Colorado's gaming commission declined to adopt rules for exchange wagering; and Novig, Inc. withdrew from that market in April 2024 (pp.20-21, ¶¶66-69). The CFTC designated Ludlow Exchange a contract market on June 16, 2026.

No court order we found stops it. Novig's Eligibility & Legality page, dated September 2, 2026 and read November 5, says Novig "is available nationwide, with the exception of Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan," judged by where you are when you trade. It does not mention Wisconsin or the suit.

There is no broker route: the complaint says no futures commission merchant may intermediate trades or carry accounts on Novig's exchange (p.8, ¶21). Novig, Inc. separately runs a sweepstakes product, and the complaint says its rules "do not currently permit full sweepstakes redemption for participants located in Wisconsin" (p.22, ¶70). The suit asks nothing about balances, withdrawals or open positions. Every state where Novig faces an action is on the Novig legal page.

Novig's suit asks whether Wisconsin's gambling and public nuisance laws reach its contracts, which is a state enforcement question and not a ruling on federal income tax. How a Novig year comes out under the three ways we most often see people file is on Novig taxes, since the IRS has issued no guidance on event contracts.