Novig Sues Massachusetts, Washington and New Mexico

Novig, the sweepstakes sportsbook that added a federally licensed exchange in June, sued the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Washington and New Mexico on August 6, taking it to four states in three days.

Three new complaints reached the federal dockets on August 6, each one asking a district court to declare that the state's gambling laws are preempted by federal commodities law as applied to Novig's event contracts. They follow the New York suit we covered on August 5. One company, four states, one legal theory. Washington is on that list, a state every brand we track already refuses to serve.

Which states has Novig sued, and where?

Every line below comes from the federal docket entries themselves.

Ludlow Exchange, LLC is Novig's wholly owned subsidiary and the entity the CFTC designated a contract market on June 16, 2026, filing 59390 on the Commission's own record. The named defendants are the sitting attorneys general: Andrea Joy Campbell in Massachusetts, Nicholas W. Brown in Washington, Raúl Torrez in New Mexico, Letitia James in New York. Two of the complaints reach past the attorney general to the state's gambling regulator. The Massachusetts complaint also names the chair, executive director and four commissioners of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. The Washington complaint names five Washington State Gambling Commission officials in their official capacities: executive director Tina Griffin, chair Sarah Lawson, vice chair Alicia Levy, and commissioners Noah Skartvedt and Michael Charles.

A note on dates, because they do not line up neatly. The Massachusetts docket records the case as filed August 6, while the complaint itself is signed August 7 and carries an August 7 electronic filing stamp. We could read the Massachusetts complaint when this piece published and the Washington one only on a later re-probe; the New Mexico filing is still not available through the public document system, so anything below about its contents would be guesswork and we are not offering any.

What does the Massachusetts complaint actually argue?

One count. Preemption under the Supremacy Clause by the Commodity Exchange Act, filed by Sullivan & Cromwell with Boston counsel Aaron Katz Law.

Novig says it began offering event contracts to Massachusetts customers "this week" and expects the state to come after it "imminently," because Massachusetts already did exactly that to somebody else. The Kalshi sequence, as the complaint sets it out:

1. September 12, 2025: Attorney General Campbell sues KalshiEX in Suffolk Superior Court.
2. January 20, 2026: the court grants a preliminary injunction.
3. February 6, 2026: the court enters an order barring the exchange from facilitating any contract on "sporting events" for "any person located in Massachusetts."
4. June 5, 2026: Campbell adds seven Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act counts.

The complaint quotes her press release: "any company that wants to be in the sports gaming business in Massachusetts must play by our rules - no exceptions." We could not retrieve that release ourselves, because mass.gov refused our request, so the quote is Novig's rendering of it.

The relief sought is broad. Novig asks the court to stop Massachusetts enforcing its sports wagering chapter, its general gaming statutes, the Gaming Commission's regulations and its consumer protection law against the exchange.

Is Novig still running its sweepstakes coins?

No. When this article published we answered yes, on the strength of Novig's own complaint. Its help centre, read on August 8, says both currencies are retired and that trading now requires a deposit; its sweepstakes rules and terms of use return 404. It was already gone when these complaints were filed: Novig announced the nationwide launch of its federally regulated exchange on August 4, and trade coverage that day reported the sweepstakes platform as shuttered, two days before these three cases reached the docket. What follows is what those filings say, not a description of a live product. Our report on the retirement has the documentary record.

The complaint describes the September 2024 product in the present tense: Novig Coins as the free-play currency with no redemption, Novig Cash as the sweepstakes-entry currency earned through gameplay, referrals, daily logins, giveaways, a free mail-in alternative method of entry, or as a bonus attached to marked Coin purchases. That is the Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins split under different names. Novig, Inc. "has continued to operate this offering," the filing says, while the subsidiary went and got a federal designation.

One sentence in there deserves more attention than it will get. Novig's sweepstakes rules "do not currently permit full sweepstakes redemption for participants located in Massachusetts" - and Massachusetts has no sweepstakes ban. Its ban bill went to a study order in March and stayed dead when formal sessions closed on July 31. This is a company restricting redemption in an open state, which is the same pattern we found when 13 states with no ban statute turned out to be blocked by major brands anyway.

Why does no sweepstakes casino operate in Washington?

Because Washington is where this industry does not go.

RCW 9.46.240 makes transmitting gambling information online a Class C felony, five years and $10,000, and Washington has no sweepstakes-specific ban at all. It does not need one. Every brand we track excludes the state, a clean sweep matched only by Idaho and Michigan, where the regulator cleared the market out without a ban statute. Operators do not litigate Washington. They leave.

Novig is not asking Washington's permission. It is asking a federal judge to say Washington cannot ask. That is a materially more aggressive posture than the New York filing, where the state had already been fighting event-contract platforms in public for ten months.

Its complaint, readable since we first reported this, is built the same way as the Massachusetts one: a single count under the Supremacy Clause, seeking to stop the state "enforcing Washington's preempted gambling and consumer protection laws against federally regulated transactions that Congress placed within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission." It cites the state's own case against KalshiEX in King County Superior Court, brought under the Washington Gambling Act at RCW 9.46, the Consumer Protection Act at RCW 19.86 and the Recovery of Money Lost at Gambling Act at RCW 4.24.070, as the enforcement it expects to face. And it puts its own arrival in the state at the same distance the Massachusetts filing does: Novig "began offering these event contracts to customers located in Washington this week."

Does this help players in a banned state?

Not yet, and the evidence this week runs the other way. Two federal courts rejected the same preemption theory in the three days before Novig filed: Utah entered judgment against Kalshi on August 4 and Michigan denied Coinbase an injunction on August 6. Novig filed anyway, into three new federal courts, one of them in a state whose own courts have already enjoined a federally designated exchange from serving anyone inside its borders. Not one of the state bans this wave has produced has been reopened by a lawsuit.

Nothing here moves a date in your state. New York's dual-currency ban stands, New Mexico remains open, and a complaint is an argument rather than a finding, so our map of what each state allows today is the thing to check rather than a docket. What the filings do tell you is that at least one sweepstakes operator now believes a federal license is a better long-term asset than a coin product, and operators who think that way tend to wind the coin product down eventually. If you hold a redeemable balance anywhere, our walkthrough of a first cash-out is the thing to act on before an announcement rather than after one. Brands still running the standard model, Sportzino and Legendz among them, are unaffected by these filings, which bind nobody but the parties, and our ranked list of tested brands shows where each of them currently stands.

We could not check any of this against Novig itself. Its site serves no readable text to our tools, and its own page title now describes it as a sports trading app rather than a sweepstakes product.

Sources & documents

• Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, Ludlow Exchange, LLC d/b/a Novig v. Campbell, No. 1:26-cv-13615 (D. Mass.)
• Federal docket, Ludlow Exchange, LLC v. Campbell (D. Mass.)
• Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, Ludlow Exchange, LLC d/b/a Novig v. Brown, No. 3:26-cv-05888 (W.D. Wash.) - 45 pages, filed August 6, 2026; not retrievable when this piece published and downloaded on the August 18 re-probe, the source for the Gambling Commission defendants and the quotations in the Washington section
• Federal docket, Ludlow Exchange, LLC v. Brown, No. 3:26-cv-05888 (W.D. Wash.)
• Federal docket, Ludlow Exchange, LLC d/b/a Novig v. Torrez, No. 1:26-cv-02576 (D.N.M.)
• Federal docket, Ludlow Exchange, LLC v. James, No. 1:26-cv-06676 (S.D.N.Y.)
• CFTC industry filing 59390, Ludlow Exchange, LLC, status Designated, June 16, 2026
• Washington State Office of the Attorney General
• New Mexico Department of Justice, Meet the Attorney General

All four dockets were read on August 7, 2026, the day after the three new cases appeared, and every case name, docket number, court and filing date in the table above comes from the docket record itself. The Massachusetts complaint was read in full then; the Washington complaint was not available at the time and was downloaded and read on August 18, 2026, when the public document system carried it. The New Mexico complaint is still not available and nothing above describes its contents. Product descriptions and the account of Massachusetts enforcement come from Novig's complaint and are its allegations, not findings by any court. Ludlow Exchange's designation was confirmed directly against the CFTC's own filing record. Nick Brown was confirmed as Washington's attorney general against his office's site and Raúl Torrez as New Mexico's against his office's published record; nmdoj.gov and mass.gov both refuse our requests, so the Massachusetts press release quoted in the complaint is Novig's rendering of it rather than one we read.

21+. Play responsibly. If gambling stops being fun, help is free and confidential: call or text 1-800-GAMBLER, or see our responsible gaming resources.