- ▸ Kalshi must clear three independent textual questions to keep its preemption theory intact.
- ▸ The CFTC’s position on at least one of those questions changed between 2021 and 2024 without rulemaking.
- ▸ Post-Loper Bright, courts decide all three without “deference to the agency.”
- ▸ And the Sixth Circuit just signaled it would go the other way on the framing question that determines which doctrines apply, opening a circuit split with the Third Circuit that the Supreme Court is increasingly likely to resolve.
A May 4 deadline looms for Kalshi to geofence Nevada after Carson City District Court Judge Jason Woodbury granted a preliminary injunction to the Nevada Gaming Control Board on April 28. The state-court ruling, which followed Woodbury’s earlier characterization of sports event contracts as “indistinguishable” from placing a sports bet, adds to a litigation map now spanning five federal circuits, with a circuit split increasingly likely. Kalshi’s preemption cases have largely been framed as a “gaming versus swaps” debate, but the questions actually before the courts are more layered.
Three textual questions sit between the parties and a ruling, and a “no” on any one defeats the preemption theory:
- Is a sports outcome a commodity under the Commodity Exchange Act?
- Is a contract referencing that outcome a swap?
- Does the contract fall within the “gaming” category in CFTC Rule 40.11(a)(1)?
Underneath those three questions, the statutes and rules are themselves contested. The starkest tension is between the CFTC’s implementing rule and its underlying statute, written in different registers: a discretionary “may” in CEA Section 5c(c)(5)(C) and a categorical “shall not” in the rule. The agency has not reconciled the gap. Loper Bright in 2024 eliminated Chevron deference, which had required federal courts to defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Now that courts interpret these statutes independently rather than deferring to the agency, the reconciliation is the courts’ job, and the CFTC’s litigation positions carry no deferential weight.
“After the Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright, which did away with ‘Chevron deference’ in interpreting the meaning of a statute, it no longer matters what the CFTC thinks about the meaning of the various provisions of the CEA,” Peter Sanchez Guarda, a derivatives lawyer and former CFTC attorney, told DeFi Rate. “So even if I was the sole commissioner at the CFTC, my opinion wouldn’t matter to the judge.”
That puts the statutory text and the agency’s historical record, rather than its current litigation positions, at the center of what courts now have to resolve. What follows is a field guide to the textual sticking points in the cases between Kalshi and state gaming regulators.
The framing question: Derivatives or sports gambling field?
Kalshi and the CFTC are not arguing that Congress gave the CFTC jurisdiction over sports betting. Their position rests on the statutory definition of a swap:
- The CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over swaps, a statutorily defined category;
- Sports-event contracts on a DCM satisfy that definition;
- Therefore, those contracts fall in the CFTC’s lane: not because they involve a sports outcome, but because they meet the statutory definition of a swap.
Nevada’s counter is that the operative effect is a displacement of sports-betting regulation regardless of label, and that the framing choice, whether the field at issue is “DCM-listed event contracts” or “sports gambling,” determines which doctrines a court applies. Courts taking the DCM-trading framing have approached the case as a pure statutory-text question. Courts taking the sports-gambling framing have applied the preemption canons (presumption against preemption, major questions) that have historically protected state police power.
The Third Circuit in Kalshi v. Flaherty characterized the DCM-trading framing as the “narrower” one: “New Jersey frames the issue broadly (regulating all sports gambling) rather than narrowly (regulating trading on federally designated contract markets).” The opinion goes on: “The Act preempts state laws that directly interfere with swaps traded on DCMs. Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts are swaps traded on a CFTC-licensed DCM, so the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction.”
The Sixth Circuit on April 24, 2026 went the other way procedurally in Kalshi v. Schuler, characterizing the relevant field as “sports gambling,” not “futures trading,” and applying the presumption against preemption. The same-statute, opposite-framing split is the divide likely to propel the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The commodity threshold
The CEA gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over transactions “involving swaps or contracts of sale of a commodity.” If a sports outcome isn’t a commodity, the CFTC has no jurisdictional hook, and the preemption argument never gets off the ground.
“The question before you get to [the federal preemption] question is whether sports are commodities under the commodity exchange act,” Sanchez Guarda said.
The threshold has received less public attention because it logically precedes the gaming-versus-swap fight, but it is the first place a skeptical judge could rule against Kalshi. And the agency has not been unanimous on what qualifies. The 2010 MDEX approval of contracts on movie box-office receipts split 3-2, with Commissioners Chilton and Sommers dissenting on commodity grounds.
“When the first event contract on movie box-office receipts was approved by the CFTC, it barely passed,” Sanchez Guarda said. “The two dissenting commissioners did not think it qualified as a commodity.” Within weeks, Sections 721 and 746 of the Dodd-Frank Act excluded “motion picture box office receipts” from the commodity definition by statute.
The agency’s position has shifted considerably since 2010. When ErisX self-certified NFL contracts in late 2020, CFTC staff drafted an Order finding the contracts involved gaming and were contrary to the public interest. ErisX withdrew the filing hours before the Commission vote. Then-Commissioner Brian Quintenz, who was the CFTC chair nominee before Michael Selig, wrote that he would have dissented from the staff Order on grounds “around the statute’s constitutionality, the regulation’s validity, and the order’s arbitrariness.” His substantive view was that “All events are commodities,” sports outcomes could “have a legitimate economic and hedging purpose for businesses” post-Murphy, and there is “a qualitative and logical” distinction between speculation and betting. Commissioner Dan Berkovitz‘s parallel April 2021 statement defended the staff’s denial path. The 2021 picture was thus: Quintenz publicly in favor, Berkovitz and the staff against, and a Commission majority preparing to vote in line with the staff Order before ErisX pulled the certification.
The 2021 ErisX product was also more constrained than Kalshi’s. ErisX limited trading to “eligible contract participants” like sportsbooks hedging book exposure, vendors and stadium owners hedging attendance risk, and designated market makers. It also explicitly excluded “retail (non-ECP) persons and persons seeking to profit based upon the outcome of particular sporting events.” Kalshi’s 2024 self-certifications go further: contracts are listed to retail customers without any ECP restriction.
Note: Quintenz left the CFTC in August 2021 and joined Kalshi’s board that November, but the March 2021 statement reflects his agency-era view. Post-Loper Bright, that 2021 record is part of what courts will weigh directly. The institutional shift between 2021 and 2024 is more accurately described as Quintenz’s minority position becoming the majority position, while the staff/Berkovitz analysis was abandoned without rulemaking. Because the threshold question is logically prior to the gaming analysis, a court could potentially resolve the case there without ever reaching the gaming definition.
The Rule 40.11 contradiction
Even if a court accepts that sports outcomes are commodities and the contracts are swaps, Rule 40.11 presents the next hurdle. The statute’s “special rule” provision, CEA Section 5c(c)(5)(C), states the Commission may determine that an event contract involving one of five enumerated activities (activity unlawful under state or federal law; terrorism; assassination; war; or gaming) is contrary to the public interest. “May” is a grant of discretion. Regulation 40.11(a)(1), implementing the special rule, provides that a registered exchange “shall not list” any contract that “involves, relates to, or references” any of the five categories. That is a categorical prohibition. Subsection (c) of the same regulation provides a 90-day review path under which the Commission may stay a self-certified contract and decide whether to approve or disapprove it.
A judge applying Rule 40.11 has to decide which version controls. If “may” controls, sports contracts are evaluable on the merits, and the CFTC’s failure to invoke its discretion is itself evidence of a permissive posture. If “shall not” controls, the contracts are categorically banned and self-certification is structurally insufficient to override the prohibition. Either reading has internal coherence, and the CFTC has not chosen between them in a context a court could credit.
One rule, three different readings
Former Commissioner Summer Mersinger flagged the tension twice. In a June 2023 dissent, she said: “Read literally, Rule 40.11(a) removes entirely the flexibility that Congress granted the Commission.” In her May 2024 dissent, she said the Commission “lacks legal authority under the CEA to make public interest determinations by category.”
Sports-betting attorney Daniel Wallach pushed back on Mersinger’s framing in an interview with DeFi Rate, saying: “That rule reflected Congress’s delegation to the CFTC to make that determination, which the CFTC did. The CFTC’s hands certainly were not tied; at any point there could have been additional rulemaking, repeal of the rule, modification of the rule, but none of that ever occurred. Fifteen years of agency non-revision is itself evidence of how the rule was understood until January 22, 2025, when Kalshi filed its ‘self-certification’ of sports-event contracts a mere two days into Donald Trump’s second term in office. Prior to that time, the CFTC had unwaveringly enforced the regulatory ban against ‘gaming’ contracts when other exchanges such as ErisX and Crypto.com sought to list the same kind of sports-event contracts.”
Sanchez Guarda offered a contrary read of the rule itself: “40.11’s ‘shall not list’ may be the CFTC determining that all such contracts are not something that can be listed…Did they intend to say none of these are acceptable by passing Rule 40.11?” On that view, the categorical rule is itself the exercise of the discretion Congress granted, applied at the rulemaking stage to categories Congress identified as problematic.
Kalshi reads 40.11 differently from both. On Kalshi’s view, (a)(1) and (c) must be read together as an integrated review mechanism: (a)(1) identifies categories of contracts that may trigger heightened scrutiny, (c) provides the 90-day review process, and the categorical “shall not list” language is operationalized through that review path rather than as a freestanding ban. Where the Commission does not invoke (c), the contract can be self-certified and listed. The CFTC’s current litigation position aligns with Kalshi’s reading.
Adding to the tall task for the courts, the CFTC has never run a sports contract through Rule 40.11(c)’s 90-day review, so the readings have not been reconciled in any court-credible context.
The CFTC has never run a sports contract through Rule 40.11(c)’s 90-day review, so no agency action has reconciled the readings. Loper Bright now requires the courts to fill that gap on their own.
Judge Lee’s question, Kalshi’s choice
That very gap surfaced at the Ninth Circuit oral argument in which three panel judges heard arguments from three exchange lawyers, Nevada’s counsel and CFTC counsel. Judge Kenneth Lee, working through whether 40.11(c)’s 90-day review path could realistically handle a sports docket, brought up a scenario that under a strict reading, the CFTC might have to approve every game across a 162-game baseball season. Judge Lee asked the agency’s counsel: “Can you give us any examples where Subsection C has been used at this point?” and Kalshi’s counsel responded: “I can’t off the top of my head, Your Honor.” The exchange highlighted the unsettled procedural status of how 40.11(a) and (c) operate together.
Kalshi also has not challenged Rule 40.11’s validity through Administrative Procedure Act (APA) channels, a fact that Judge Ryan Nelson probed during the hearing. Judge Nelson asked Kalshi’s counsel: “Have you made that argument that the rule is invalid under the statute? Have you challenged this rule?” Counsel: “We have not.” Kalshi’s litigation position is that 40.11(a)(1) should be read narrowly enough that its sports contracts fall outside it, rather than challenging the rule’s validity directly. Nelson’s questioning implied that Kalshi has not preserved a fallback validity argument. Without one, the strategy depends on courts reading the rule narrowly rather than according to its plain text.
States face a parallel procedural obstacle. Asked whether the APA offers a state a path to compel CFTC enforcement of 40.11, Wallach told DeFi Rate:
“When rules are published, that becomes a final agency action subject to judicial review under the APA. Inaction is not so easy to challenge since it’s not a final agency action. The only realistic path for challenging inaction is through a petition for writ of mandamus to get a court order requiring the agency to perform a non-discretionary ministerial act, such as enforcing a prohibition. But the ‘gaming’ verbiage suggests a little discretion as to what constitutes gaming.”
As to whether sports contracts fit within the definition, Wallach said: “Sports betting, in my opinion, clearly fits. Certainly, Kalshi agreed with that premise in the DC case over election contracts, when it called sports-event contracts the ‘classic example’ of ‘gaming.'”
Three procedural paths thus have not produced a definitive answer. The agency has not invoked (c); Kalshi has not challenged the rule itself; the APA does not offer states an easy path to force enforcement. With administrative paths unavailable, the dispute has moved to the courts hearing the preemption suits, now involving five circuits and counting.
Self-certification, Rule 40.3, and how Kalshi got here
How Kalshi got the contracts listed in the first place is the procedural backdrop to the litigation, territory Judge Nelson pressed during oral argument. Self-certification under Regulation 40.2 is not designed for novel products. Sanchez Guarda described the distinction: “If you were trading WTI and wanted to offer Light Sweet Crude, you might self-certify. But if you were trading WTI and wanted to offer Gold, you would submit the contracts for approval. It’s asking for permission versus asking for forgiveness.” For brand-new contracts, the CEA contemplates voluntary submission for approval under Rule 40.3, “subject to review by the Commission for a period of 45 days” with an option to extend the review period up to 45 additional days.
The CFTC has not reviewed and approved sports event contracts; rather, it has declined to object to self-certifications within the statutory window. Judge Nelson framed the procedural posture at the Ninth Circuit oral argument as follows: “40.11 says, look, terrorism, assassination, war, gaming. We’re not letting those go up. Why? Because this is self-certification. Nobody passes this off to the CFTC…If you want them to go up, come to us. We’ll do a 90-day review, and we will either allow it or disallow it.”
Nelson then noted Kalshi’s position in earlier D.C. Circuit litigation over its election contracts, where Kalshi had argued that “an event contract therefore involves gaming, if it is contingent on a game related event like the Kentucky Derby, Super Bowl, or Masters golf tournament.” Nelson asked how that prior position squared with 40.11(a)(1): “If that’s true, then you should have, under the regulations, gone to the CFTC and said, Hey, look, this is a gaming contract…and then you could have challenged it, but you didn’t do that.” How a court reads that textured procedural history will likely shape its analysis.
What “gaming” means
Rule 40.11(a)(1) prohibits contracts that “involve, relate to, or reference” any of the five enumerated categories. The structure and categorical definitions within that list are contested.
Kalshi’s reading
Kalshi reads the enumerated categories as describing the underlying activity or event a contract references, not the nature of the contract itself. On that reading, a weather swap references weather; a wheat future references wheat. By extension, a contract that “references gaming” would be one whose underlying event is a wager, not any contract whose payoff depends on a competition. A contract on whether a roulette wheel lands on red would reference gaming; a contract on whether the Chiefs cover the spread would reference a football game. That structural reading is central to Kalshi’s current defense, though it contradicts a position the exchange in a previous lawsuit.
A potential hurdle for Kalshi is the inconsistency Judge Nelson brought up between Kalshi’s current legal position and the arguments they made during Kalshi v. CFTC, a lawsuit over election contracts that Kalshi won in 2024. In that case, Judge Jia Cobb adopted a broad, plain-meaning reading of “gaming” under the CEA’s Special Rule, agreeing with Kalshi counsel (at the time) that the term can include activities like betting on games. She also construed “involve” expansively to mean “relating to,” writing that a contract “involves” an enumerated activity if the underlying event relates to it. Under that approach, contracts tied to sporting outcomes could fall within the “gaming” category, but the opinion stops short of resolving how specific sports contracts should ultimately be classified.
Alternative readings of “gaming”
Nevada reads the list differently. State gaming statutes generally define gambling to include wagering on uncertain events, including sports, and the CFTC’s 2011 adopting release for Rule 40.11 footnotes state-law gambling statutes and uses “gaming” and “gambling” interchangeably. Mersinger’s 2024 dissent stakes a middle position: sports outcomes are more plausibly within the enumerated category, but elections and awards are not absent a separate rulemaking.
Sanchez Guarda made a broader interpretive point: “Gaming is not the same as gambling, so if Congress used a different word, they probably intended a different meaning.” If the words mean the same thing, Nevada has the easier case. If Congress picked the narrower word deliberately, Kalshi has room to run.
Berkovitz’s April 2021 ErisX statement offered a working framework: “Football is a game. Betting on the outcome of games is ‘gaming.'” On Berkovitz’s reading, contracts “structured identically to gaming contracts, labelled with the same terms as gaming contracts, and designed with a purpose to hedge gaming contracts,” including moneyline, point spread, over/under, fall within the 40.11 prohibition.
The “financial consequence” nexus
The swap definition in CEA Section 1a(47) also requires that the underlying event be “associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.” How tight that “associated with” has to be is one of the contested textual questions in the case.
The narrow and broad readings
Nevada reads the phrase narrowly. At the Ninth Circuit, its counsel argued 1a(47) contemplates “events with inherent business risk” like a hurricane affecting crop yields, or interest rates moving against a loan book, not events whose financial consequences are downstream of the underlying activity. The CEA’s findings provision in Section 3(a) frames the statute’s purpose as “managing and assuming price risks, discovering prices or disseminating pricing information through trading in liquid, fair and financially secure trading facilities.” On Nevada’s reading, weather swaps fit that paradigm because drought has direct financial effect; a prop bet on whether a kicker makes a 47-yard field goal does not.
Kalshi reads the phrase broadly. Its counsel responded at oral argument that “the problem with all of those arguments is that none of them are in the text”: the statute says “potential” consequences and does not distinguish inherent from downstream. Sports outcomes have potential financial consequences for sponsors, advertisers, television networks, franchises, vendors, and stadiums. The Third Circuit majority accepted that reading: “The outcome of a sports event certainly can be associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence,” with “numerous affected stakeholders, including sponsors, advertisers, television networks, franchises, and local and national communities.”
Lee’s election test
Judge Lee tested the broad reading from the other direction at the Ninth Circuit, raising elections rather than sports: “if you’re a company that invests a lot in green technology, you may hedge your risk and say, if President Trump wins, I may be adversely affected.” Nevada’s counsel pushed back, saying those are “downstream economic consequences as opposed to consequences that come from financial instruments based on an underlying commodity.” Lee responded that weather swaps tied to crop effects are clearly accepted derivatives, “so I don’t see why the outcome of an election is that much more different.”
The hedging loop
The hedging-utility argument folds into the nexus question. Exchange lawyers argue prediction markets satisfy the financial-consequences test because they enable real commercial hedging from entities like sportsbooks balancing books, businesses hedging promotional liability, and vendors hedging attendance. But Rajiv Sethi, a Columbia University and Barnard College professor and economist who has written on prediction-market design, told DeFi Rate the empirical pattern complicates the claim:
“Although one can find examples in which prediction markets could be useful vehicles for hedging, most trading volume across all contract categories is motivated by speculation, not hedging. This is also true in financial markets more generally. For example, Forex markets could be used for hedging but are dominated by speculative flows. Prediction markets are no exception to this, especially when it comes to markets referencing sporting events.”
Berkovitz’s April 2021 ErisX analysis accepted that structural argument in principle but required evidence of “more-than-occasional” hedging use, a threshold ErisX allegedly did not meet, and one Kalshi has not been required to meet on its self-certified retail product.
On Kalshi’s reading, “associated with a potential financial consequence” sweeps in any event anyone could plausibly hedge against. On Nevada’s reading, the consequence must be inherent to the underlying activity. The text itself leaves room for interpretation.
The two-sided market: Does market structure matter?
The “is Kalshi a sportsbook” debate often ends at consumer optics. The legal question is whether the DCM architecture is what qualifies Kalshi’s contracts as swaps and disqualifies sportsbook bets. CEA Section 1a(47) defines “swap” to include any agreement “that provides for any… payment or delivery… that is dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of an event or contingency associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.”
Nevada’s no-limiting-principle critique
Nevada points out that notably absent from that text is any explicit requirement that a contract be centrally cleared, standardized, or listed on a DCM. Those are the regulatory consequences of being a swap under Dodd-Frank, not elements of the definition. Nevada’s “no limiting principle” critique builds on that omission, arguing that the event-contingent-payoff language has no architectural requirement, which means it either captures both Kalshi’s DCM contracts and Caesars’ sportsbook bets, or it captures neither.
Kalshi’s structural rebuttal
Kalshi’s rebuttal is the “two-sided market” argument: a Kalshi contract is a standardized, anonymously-traded position in a two-sided order book, cleared by Kalshi Klear, with no house taking the other side. The “no house” argument has stirred its own debate due to the contested role of market makers in liquidity provision for event contract trading, and prompted Judge Nelson’s memorable “it’s the same thing” line. The swap definition’s event-contingent-payoff language, on Kalshi’s reading, must be read alongside the enumerated types including interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, and weather swaps, all of which trade through DCM-type architecture. On that view, structural features are an implied limiting principle within the definition itself.
Sethi identified for this piece two main mechanical differences from a bookmaker: “Traditional bookmakers and prediction markets both allow people to bet on referenced events, but there are two main differences. “First, market contracts are liquid, so bets can be closed out or reversed quickly and easily. And second, any trader can choose to act as a market maker, placing orders on both sides of the market, thus acting as a bookmaker. This latter effect leads to tighter spreads, as market makers compete on pricing.”
The ability to set prices via limit orders, the transparency of order books, and peer-to-peer pricing make event contract trading structurally distinct from sports betting. Whether those differences outweigh the products’ functional similarities in courts’ classifications remains an open question.
The pari-mutuel counter
Wallach pushed back on Kalshi’s architectural reading: “Two-sided doesn’t remove a transaction from the realm of gambling. Pari-mutuel wagering on horse racing is not against the house. That’s gambling. Lotteries are not peer to peer. Lotteries are not against the house. There are many forms of gambling that are regulated under state law which approximate the kind of peer-to-peer that exists on Kalshi exchanges. What makes it sports gambling is the basic character and the substance of the transaction, not the architecture surrounding it.”
The Third Circuit’s response
The Third Circuit adopted a functional reading and addressed the slippery-slope concern through delegated rulemaking: “The outcome of a sports event certainly can be associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.” On the no-limiting-principle critique, it said New Jersey and the dissent “pile inference upon inference,” pointing instead to the CFTC and SEC’s authority to “further define” swaps. Judge Roth dissented on separate grounds, conceding the plain text reaches Kalshi’s contracts but arguing they are “gaming contracts” under the CEA’s special rule and not preempted from state regulation.
A core issue then is whether the definition of a “swap” incorporates structural features or is purely functional. If structural features matter, Kalshi’s contracts are swaps and Caesars’ bets are not. If function controls, either both are swaps or neither is, and Nevada’s no-limiting-principle argument prevails. That question could be more decisive than the gaming classification in deciding the case.
What to watch next in states vs. prediction markets cases
The Ninth Circuit opinion is expected in the coming weeks. The Sixth Circuit’s merits panel will rule on an expedited schedule that closes June 4. Two more appellate hearings on sports-event contracts are scheduled the week of May 4: the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court hears Commonwealth v. Kalshi Monday, and the Fourth Circuit hears Kalshi v. Maryland Thursday. Both are sports-only appeals where the states prevailed in previous rulings.
Meanwhile, the litigation map keeps expanding. On April 24, the CFTC also sued New York in the Southern District, opening a Second Circuit pathway alongside parallel CFTC suits in Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois. The CFTC is also suing Wisconsin and has filed an amicus brief supporting Kalshi in the Massachusetts state-court litigation. The textual questions analyzed here will travel with each new filing, and after Loper Bright, courts in five circuits will resolve them without deference to the agency that wrote the rule.
The CFTC’s March 2026 ANPRM (Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) on prediction markets closes for comment today (April 30). Whatever the agency proposes will be the Commission’s first attempt to define “gaming” in a form binding on the courts. None of the core three textual questions under review has a settled answer on the current record.
Wallach told DeFi Rate that 17 of 21 judicial rulings on contested preliminary-injunction motions have so far sided with the states, including every case in which a court applied the presumption against preemption (Massachusetts, Maryland, Nevada, Ohio). The four state losses (Third Circuit, Arizona, New Jersey, Tennessee) came in cases where the presumption was not applied and the court applied a purely textual approach based primarily on the CEA’s definition of a “swap.”
Former CFTC General Counsel Rob Schwartz disputes that framing, suggesting some courts have allowed policy concerns to shape outcomes. He argues the issue is a legal one, focused on the statute’s text, with policy questions reserved for agencies and challengeable through the APA. “Policy is for policymakers, and the remedies are under the APA,” said Schwartz.
As I’ve said, some of the courts have been preoccupied with their own public policy concerns. That has nothing to do with the question before them. Policy is for policymakers, and the remedies are under the APA. https://t.co/F8eZoTrxww
— Rob Schwartz (@FormerCFTCGC) April 26, 2026
As the circuit split deepens, the question for the Supreme Court is likely to come down to the same threshold issues now dividing lower courts: whether sports outcomes qualify as commodities, whether these contracts are swaps, and how broadly to read the “gaming” restriction.
